Hello everyone!

I'm trying to find someone or somewhere that can sell me a bunch of broken / non-functional units of circuitry that are kind of like this..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1977-1982-...h=item44228ca20d:g:Q7AAAOSw4HlZbPbk:rk:1:pf:0

I would need at least 33 pieces that are of unique appearance and design for this project... I want to use them as art for a physical art edition for a music release I would like to put out..

Any help or guidance at all would be very much appreciated!

 

Welcome to AAC!

Don't know where you can buy such boards, but one possibility would be to get some thin copper clad boards and make your own.

 

How would one go about making such perfect looking designs like that pictured above, though?

It seems like it would be very difficult, especially for them to look that cool! Haha.. I really like the idea of utilizing repurposed, broken circuitry for this release... I already got a bunch of little broken circuits on ebay for cheap, gonna use them as inserts for the release... will spray paint info on the backs of the little boards using a custom (tediously hand-designed) stencil with all the textual info on it.

At this point, I'm just trying to figure out a simple, easy, and fun way to come up with 33 individually unique cut and paste artwork wherein components are re-used/re-purposed circuitry components, whatever works.

 

It seems like it would be very difficult, especially for them to look that cool!

Cool is in the eyes of the beholder. The one you referenced didn't look particularly spectacular to me.

There's a DIY PCB process called toner transfer. It requires a laser printer, transfer media (many use paper, some use wax, some use specialty toner transfer paper; I use inkjet transparencies), iron, and ferric chloride (or other etchant). You draw your design using whatever tool you want, make a mirrored print on a laser printer, use an iron (or modified laminator) to melt the toner onto the copper clad board, then etch.

We usually make things that are electrically functional, but you could do whatever you wanted. Here's a recent board I made. Picture is of the component side, but copper is visible through the board because it's 1/32" thick. For scale, spacing for most holes is 0.1".


You'll want something closer to 10 mils thick.

This is what the artwork looked like before transfer:

 

Hello everyone!

I'm trying to find someone or somewhere that can sell me a bunch of broken / non-functional units of circuitry that are kind of like this..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1977-1982-...h=item44228ca20d:g:Q7AAAOSw4HlZbPbk:rk:1:pf:0

I would need at least 33 pieces that are of unique appearance and design for this project... I want to use them as art for a physical art edition for a music release I would like to put out..

Any help or guidance at all would be very much appreciated!

Google "fpc manufacturer". Visit the websites. Call the contact number. Ask for samples.

No need to be dishonest. Tell them what and why. They may not all respond positively, but many will.

 

I'm trying to find someone or somewhere that can sell me a bunch of broken / non-functional units of circuitry that are kind of like this..

wow! That picture brought back memories. I was involved in making and maintaining the dies that made circuit boards like that back in that time frame. They were made in rolling dies that pressed the copper into plastic film then punched out the holes. The round holes with squares cut out on opposite sides were for light sockets to light up different parts of the instrument panel in GM cars. Depending on the board there could be as many a five rolls that were timed to each other as the plastic film went through the machine.

Problem is they don't do them like that any more, since they switched to LEDs. So your best bet is to find a auto wrecking yard that has old cars and strip them out of old GM cars, don't know about other makes since I worked for GM Packard Electric. Seems to me we stopped that type somewhere around the 1990's but could have been later.

 

Google "fpc manufacturer". Visit the websites. Call the contact number. Ask for samples.

No need to be dishonest. Tell them what and why. They may not all respond positively, but many will.

Awesome, I'll start reaching out to folks.. thanks for pointing me in the right direction!! I'm sure some company will have a bunch of faulty units that they wouldnt mind making some money on.

wow! That picture brought back memories. I was involved in making and maintaining the dies that made circuit boards like that back in that time frame. They were made in rolling dies that pressed the copper into plastic film then punched out the holes. The round holes with squares cut out on opposite sides were for light sockets to light up different parts of the instrument panel in GM cars. Depending on the board there could be as many a five rolls that were timed to each other as the plastic film went through the machine.

Problem is they don't do them like that any more, since they switched to LEDs. So your best bet is to find a auto wrecking yard that has old cars and strip them out of old GM cars, don't know about other makes since I worked for GM Packard Electric. Seems to me we stopped that type somewhere around the 1990's but could have been later.

Dang! These things look so cool, would be perfect my project.

 

Hello everyone!

I'm trying to find someone or somewhere that can sell me a bunch of broken / non-functional units of circuitry that are kind of like this..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1977-1982-...h=item44228ca20d:g:Q7AAAOSw4HlZbPbk:rk:1:pf:0

I would need at least 33 pieces that are of unique appearance and design for this project... I want to use them as art for a physical art edition for a music release I would like to put out..

Any help or guidance at all would be very much appreciated!

 

is this anything like what you are looking for? These panels are 15 in x5 in. I have lots of them

 

Dang! These things look so cool, would be perfect my project.

Can you just use pictures and make your art work in Photoshop or another program of that type? A quick search came up with one place that has quite a few different images - https://www.classicindustries.com/s...truck/parts/dash-components/printed-circuits/ Pretty sure more time would give you more images.

 

wow! That picture brought back memories. I was involved in making and maintaining the dies that made circuit boards like that back in that time frame. They were made in rolling dies that pressed the copper into plastic film then punched out the holes. The round holes with squares cut out on opposite sides were for light sockets to light up different parts of the instrument panel in GM cars. Depending on the board there could be as many a five rolls that were timed to each other as the plastic film went through the machine.

Problem is they don't do them like that any more, since they switched to LEDs. So your best bet is to find a auto wrecking yard that has old cars and strip them out of old GM cars, don't know about other makes since I worked for GM Packard Electric. Seems to me we stopped that type somewhere around the 1990's but could have been later.

This is fascinating to me. A bit off topic, but why were they using flexible boards behind a dash? Presumably you don't bend your dashboard very often, so why flex? Was it just to make assembly easier? Is there a fear that rigid boards are too brittle in environments with lots of vibration? I'm intrigued.

 

This is fascinating to me. A bit off topic, but why were they using flexible boards behind a dash? Presumably you don't bend your dashboard very often, so why flex? Was it just to make assembly easier? Is there a fear that rigid boards are too brittle in environments with lots of vibration? I'm intrigued.

Space and/or instillation is my first thought. Also ridged boards might be more pron to vibration.

 

Space and/or instillation is my first thought. Also ridged boards might be more pron to vibration.

Maybe smashing one's head into a FPC causes less brain damage?

 

Maybe smashing one's head into a FPC causes less brain damage?

Huh????

 

Huh????

It was just a SWAG.

How many things in your car are the way they are simply because the NHTSA has said so?

 

This is fascinating to me. A bit off topic, but why were they using flexible boards behind a dash? Presumably you don't bend your dashboard very often, so why flex? Was it just to make assembly easier? Is there a fear that rigid boards are too brittle in environments with lots of vibration? I'm intrigued.

Don't really know the answer to that but I started there in 1980 and it was a well established thing then. I really think it was the shape of the instrument panel, because many of them are slightly curved. Then the is the fact you didn't need to run a bunch of wires and this made more room behind ,between dash and firewall. The HVAC hoses take up quite a large space.

They still use a flex circuit but not made the way the one in the links show. The ones I worked with were 3 layers heat sealed together, 2layers of plain plastic with a copper core. The roller dies cutting both all of the layers were made like a rotary "steel rule die" and had to be timed so all of the layers came together in the correct position. A real pain to keep running. The dies themselves were made in a CNC mill, a Bostomatic. 5 axis.

 

Most auto manufacturers used this technology in the 70s to 90s and as mentioned above, the best place to go is an auto wreckers. They are getting harder to find but there are still lots out there. I have some here but they are attached to working instrument clusters. They were used for ease of installation and service. Not sure why they went away from it but I guess circuitry became more complex over the years. Now an instrument cluster is a small ECM.

 

Having dealt with circuit board houses in the past, I do know they have rejects from their production runs. Often they're just discarded. I recall doing a hydroscopic test on several different kinds of boards. Not able to use live boards, I asked for a number of scrap boards that were non-functional due to inner layer registration or other defects. I got plenty of samples at no cost. I then segregated them into different types, and each different type was segregated into three equal quantities. Each group was subjected to different tests. One group was left untouched (the control group), one group was placed in an oven for 3 days and the third group was submerged in a tub of water. After the three days, they were then run up the wave solder machine. The boards that soldered the best were the control group. Next was the ones soaked in water for 3 days, and the quality was nearly identical for solderability. The third group (the oven group) soldered the worst with far less solder adhesion and wetting than the other two groups. The purpose was to prove out the benefit (or lack there-of) of baking boards prior to wave soldering.

Granted, boards were not baked for 3 days prior to wave solder, but sometimes, depending on timing, a board could be put in the oven at 3:30 PM on a Friday and not be taken out till Monday at 7:00 AM. Rare as that was, the point was to not waste time pre-baking boards for the believed idea of driving moisture out of the boards. A board with moisture in it would blow solder out of the through-holes, which we hadn't been seeing. Having heard that submarine skins were made of similar materials I wondered if they were not hydroscopic then why would boards be?

I proved my point, but nobody took me serious.

My point here is that you can probably get a lot of failed circuit boards of all kinds from board houses, provided they are not DOD or other proprietary property. I'm sure you can find someone manufacturing flex circuits that don't pass test and they may only ask you to pay for shipping costs.