Curved Circuit Board Art: Make a Touchless Touch-Switch LED Lamp

Step 3: Making Curved Circuit Boards

Curved circuit boards can be easily made using the very thin circuit board material available at Electronic Goldmine. I have also seen it on EBay. It is copper clad fiberglass that is only .007" thick. It works like any other circuit board except that it is so thin it can be bent and because of the malleable copper cladding on both sides, it will hold its bent shape. It is quite flexible and can even be bent to form a ring that fits a finger. Bend it too much, however, and it will snap like a twig.

The bendable circuit board material can be etched by any conventional circuit board method that you prefer. The method I used for creating a resist is very simple and quick. I took inexpensive clear shelf liner which is sticky on one side and laminated the copper clad board between two layers of the vinyl shelf liner.

I then took a double bladed knife that I made (see pic5) by bolting two exact o blades to the sides of a fiberglass circuit board with the copper etched off. Pic6 shows how I cut out wherever I wanted to etch away the copper. You can cut curved lines or use a ruler to guide the double knife and cut straight lines.

pic7 shows the main body of the lamp laminated with shelf liner before cutting, etching and bending. It is 12" long.

You can of course etch very precise and complex circuit boards. I have chosen to used the curved surfaces to mount LEDs and inputs to create a simple circuit as the main body and structure. The detailed and more intricate part of the circuit is is a fast circuit module made on fiberglass perfboard. See next step.

Comments

[jeff-o]

I'd recommend coating the soldered board with some clear varnish, so that the copper doesn't tarnish, and it's protected from accidental shorts. Very, very cool design!