Conductive Ink : Part I

Don’t wire a circuit—doodle it. To connect batteries to devices such as resistors and LEDs, a newly developed ballpoint pen uses silver-based ink that conducts electricity through lines drawn over paper, wood, plastic and even some textiles. Jennifer Lewis, the materials scientist who led the pen’s design at the University of Illinois, says she is now looking for business partners and hopes to have products that integrate the pen and ink on the market within a few months.Check out Video on you-tube.



DuPont microcircuit materials offers a wide variety of conductive inks for Printed Electronics Applications. They include conductive silver ink, conductive carbon ink, silver chloride ink and dielectric ink which can be used to form conductive traces, capacitor and resistor elements, bio sensors and dielectric and encapsulating layers that are compatible with many substrate surfaces including polyester, glass, and ceramic.  DuPont conductive ink technologies are suitable for screen print, flexo, gravure, photo-pattern, pad printing, and other processing techniques.

These materials may be classed as fired high solids systems or PTF polymer thick film systems that allow circuits to be drawn or printed on a variety of substrate materials such as polyester to paper.

Conductive inks can be a more economical way to lay down a modern conductive traces when compared to traditional industrial standards such as etching copper from copper plated substrates to form the same conductive traces on relevant substrates, as printing is a purely additive process producing little to no waste streams which then have to be recovered or treated.

Silver inks have multiple uses today including printing RFID tags as used in modern transit tickets, they can be used to improvise or repair circuits on printed circuit boards.Computer keyboards contain membranes with printed circuits that sense when a key is pressed. Windshield defrosters consisting of resistive traces applied to the glass are also printed. Many newer cars have conductive traces printed on a rear window, serving as the radio antenna.

Printed paper and plastic sheets have problematic characteristics, primarily high resistance and lack of rigidity. The resistances are too high for the majority of circuit board work, and the non-rigid nature of the materials permits undesirable forces to be exerted on component connections, causing reliability problems. Consequently such materials are only used in a restricted range of applications, usually where the flexibility is important and no parts are mounted on the sheet.

See Also : Conductive ink lets you freehand circuits on the cheap

Next Post : How to make Conductive ink?

Sources:

rushigajjar.blogspot.com

www.popsci.com/diy/article/

www.wikipedia.com

blog.makezine.com

openmaterials.org

www.dupont.com

Translate your favorite blog into your tongue

rushigajjar.blogspot.com is now having the feature of converting posts from one to other. Enjoy Electronics in your own language.

Language can be changed from dropdown box available at top of the sidebar.

Select Language​▼

Thanks,

Rushi Gajjar

Principle of an Electronic Tube Light Ballast(Choke)

Gas discharge lamps, i.e lamps using the principle to make a gas electrically conductive and thereby light emitting, are a relatively old technique. Especially fluorescent lamps represent a very widespread lighting system. It is not possible to apply the line voltage directly to such lamp, be it AC or DC, a higher or a lower magnitude. Traditionally these lamps have always been operated on AC mains by means of a so-called magnetic ballast, which is nothing more than a reactor or choke, for limiting the lamp current. 







In recent years, as power electronics techniques came up, an alternative way of operation was introduced, the so-called electronic ballast, which converts the incoming mains frequency into a much higher frequency, usually in the range of 20 kHz to 80 kHz, to operate the lamp.

If we recall the wiring of a conventional tube light using the magnetic ballast, the complete circuit comprises of magnetic ballast, starter and the tube light. The role of starter and magnetic ballast together is to proved a high surge voltage using the principle self induction such that the gas inside the gas discharge lamp (in this case mercury vapor  gets ionized  Once the gas gets ionized  the electric current find an easy path trough the ionized gas tube thus lighting the tube light. The starter is out of circuit now as the same comes in parallel with the tube light and the tube light provides the low impedance path for the current. The ballast now provides only the 'regulating action' for tube light current. The magnetic ballast works at line frequency.

The function of electronic ballasts also is analogous to the magnetic ballast but accomplished with a higher frequency in the range of 40-80KHz than the line frequency. This technique is also applied in switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) to facilitate the use of a smaller transformer. The principle of transforming at higher frequencies is the same but with the advantage of compact size and less weight.


The working principle of the electronic fluorescent ballast is rather straightforward. The AC signal is first rectified and filtered using a bridge/capacitor configuration. The next stage is an oscillator stage. The rectified DC is applied to this stage which immediately starts oscillating at the required high frequency. The oscillations are typically square wave which is buffered via an inductor before it is finally used to ignite and illuminate the connected tube.

Introduction to Google Glass

There have been miscellaneous sightings of the prototype Google Glass Explorer Edition eyewear here and there since it debuted at the Google I/O conference last June, and in January and February of this year, developers got their first taste of what they could do with it.

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v1uyQZNg2vE

And now, with the video above, we have a better idea of how Glass will work.

What is this actually?

Google Glass Explorer Edition is the first product to come out of the company's Project Glass. At its most basic level, a Glass device is something that lets you see and interact with the world around you without disconnecting from it.

The Glass headset is designed to be out of the way so it doesn't interfere with your activities. According to Google, it weighs less than most pairs of sunglasses. On the side is a touch pad for control, on top is a button for shooting photos and videos with the built-in camera, and there's a small information display positioned above the eye out of the line of sight.

The actual details about the specs that have been released are pretty light, other than to say the Explorer Edition has a camera, multiple radios for data communication, a speaker and a mic, and a gyroscope so Glass can tell your position and orientation at all times. Going by its FCC filing this includes a Broadcom 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi radio and Bluetooth 4.0 as well as bone-conduction speakers, which would keep your ears open to your surroundings.

What to do with Glass?

Eventually the eyewear may lead you through every aspect of your waking life, but in its current state of development it looks like you'll be able to do things such as have Google+ Hangouts, live-stream video, and snap pictures or shoot some movies and share what you capture with little effort. Google search is, of course, part of the package.

Judging by the video above and the product site, you'll initiate a voice command by saying "OK, Glass," followed by whatever it is you want to do, such as "take a picture." The experience seems to be very similar to using Google Now on Android devices with Jelly Bean.

FEATURES: 

The glasses have audio output to the right ear only, and there's no earbud -- the sound just leaks into space. Best practice is to cup your hand over your ear and the glasses' temple to amplify the sound. This works well,but your gesture of cupping your hand over your ear alerts people near you that you are paying attention to the device.oops!!

Disabled were all the really cool features - SMS, alerts, and the capability to read e-mail.

The titanium-framed glasses headset was comfortable and very light.

Feature	Voice activation text
Record video	"ok, glass, record a video."
Take picture	"ok, glass, take a picture."
Use [[, glass, google photos of [search query]."
Translate	"ok, glass, say [text] in [language]."
Give directions	"ok, glass, give directions to [place]."
Send message	"ok, glass, send a message to [name]." "ok, glass, send [name] that [message]." "ok, glass, send [message] to [name]."
Display weather	none/automatically (Google Now) "ok, glass, how is the weather in [location]?" "ok, glass, do I need an umbrella today?"

Google Glass has the ability to take photos and record 720p HD video. While video is recording, a recording light is displayed above the eye, which is unnoticeable to the wearer.

Glass will utilize many already-existing Google applications, such as Google Now and Google Maps. The device will also be able to display the weather.

PRICE and AVAILABILITY:

Google Glass Explorer Edition was only available to developers as a preorder for U.S.-based I/O attendees, in 2012, for $1,500. However, until February 27, you can attempt to woo Google into letting you preorder a pair by telling the company what you would do if you had Glass.

Credits: 

Google,Wikipedia,cnet

Auto-Off feature for your Circuits:

After long time I'm posting on the blog, since I was busy with my works, I was unable to resist myself from putting this cute feature for our devices :

It's a good Pick: 

I was just surfing the internet  and I got to know this tiny circuit, which can help our circuits to Sleep or shut down when in Idle mode:

Kyle Wengenroth, Electronics geek, has recently made this device using AVR Tiny85, since the code is not long enough for this project, we can use any of the small micro-controllers with lesser space in ROM, using this concept(PIC may be bulky(DIP) but it is also good).

The basic idea behind the circuit is to use a microcontroller as a timer controlling two transistors. When Kyle‘s circuit is power cycled, the timer inside an AVR starts, making a pin high, and when the timer is up, making the pin low again. This pin feeds into a PNP transistor which is in turn connected to a NPN transistor, creating a very tiny auto off circuit for anything with an SPST switch.

Download the Code,Circuit.

Have a Look : 

Try this at home