Newsgroups: sci.electronics.misc
Subject: Re: conducting inks
References: 
Allan Adler  writes:

> I've heard of special pens that containing conducting inks. They were
> mentioned to me as a way of drawing printed circuit boards and not having
> to worry about etching copper. 

Don't knwo about really drawing the circuti board, but there are 
conductive paints available... Those paints usually contain copper 
or silver so they are conductive. Those are used for shielding purposes 
(coppe paint to form EMC shield to plastic case etc.) or electronics 
repair (repairing car window heating systems, circuit board traces etc.). 

I don't know of any paint that would be feasible to form circuit boards 
that could be soldered normally. Usually this kind of paints make 
conductiv traces pn board, but soldeing to them is very hard or almost 
inpossible.

> What I'm wondering is whether the inks
> that go into these pens are available in containers other than the special
> pens, 

Silver paint is available in tiny bottles. It is quite expensive. 

I have used copper paint in spray bottle format.

> so that for example they might be put into a printer cartridge.

I don't know if those could be used for this. 
The paints I know contain quite a bit of metal in them 
(solver or copper) and I quess that a typical inkjet 
printer might not like this. The typical solvents 
used on inkjet printer inks seems to be pretty much 
like water, when in the metal paints it is something 
entirely different, which could also be a problem.

> Ignorantly,
> Allan Adler
> [email protected]
> 
> ****************************************************************************
> *                                                                          *
> *  Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT Artificial       *
> *              Intelligence Lab. My actions and comments do not reflect    *
> *              in any way on MIT. Moreover, I am nowhere near the Boston   *
> *              metropolitan area.                                          *
> *                                                                          *
> ****************************************************************************

-- 
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at 
http://www.epanorama.net/