I wanted to cut a pcb with a venyl to give my young sister a small circuit that has led and battery mount on it to teach her about how electricity move in paths concept ..
so i decided to use HVAC tape ..
this tape is conductive and it has very low resistance …
for venyl cutter, we used Silhouette Cameo
i downlaoded extension for inkscape that can cut from the program directly ..
this software provide add-on for inkscape you can control the Silhouette Cameo
so i wanted to have this battery that can holded upside down to the circuit and power it up
so i started with simplest circuit which should just power up LED
the idea is to give my young sister fun thing to look at also not just PCB circuit with paths :D
for venyl cut i can find 2 important parameters to play with, i set the values:
- speed: 0
- pressure: 20
after sending the first cut
the cutter was pressing hard it cutted the piece while it should just cut the tape mask so i adjusted the parameter reducing the pressure to 15
result:
this is better, i can take the sticker out..
after it was cut .. i put LED to it and powered it
i wanted to make the component to stick to the circuit so i started drawing “Sewing holes”
so the components can be stiched into circuit ..
however, this is not good as the tape will be teared ..
so i thought that i ll design just normal circuit with 3 leds that can be powered with this
9v battery ..
the design:
the small cut for the path so i can solder SMD resistor .. to limit the current and not burn the led
i tried to cut it for long time .. around 2 hours of adjusting the parameters (speed, pressure) ..
the cuts where bad and it was just scratches ..
so i started invistigating the hardware and found that the small piece of the tape was sticked to the knife when i put high pressure in one of the cuts:
after cleaning it ..
the cutter back to good condition i cut the design:
however, unfortunatily i couldnt solder the smd resistor into the tape i tried with: - solder wire - solder paste - hot air gun - solder tip - solder flux all of them didnt work the solder does not stick to the tape so i didnt have time but because this foil for HVAC so it was made from aluminium so i looked into internet and found this which i believe it would stick into it
Farnell Solder wire for aluminium
also found some videos on youtube that put engine oil to the aluminium sheet to solder on it Youtube solder on aluminium using oil
and of course there is EEVBLOG thread: EEVBLOG