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clay PCB and feminist hardware at 38c3 (media.ccc.de)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just saw this presentation at the Chaos Computer Club conference, for an “Ethical Hardware Kit with a PCB microcontroller made of wild clay retrieved from the forest in Austria and fired on a bonfire. Our conductive tracks use urban-mined silver and all components are re-used from old electronic devices”. It was part of the feminist hardware strand!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There’s a lot more info on their project page https://feministhackerspaces.cargo.site/Clay-PCB-Tutorial but I think it’s important that I provide context re the PCB being part of their disaster survival backpack! That had lots of other things in it too, tho unfortunately I can’t find the video about it now. But yeah, so the PCB was designed for a kinda worst-case scenario.

As regards the urban mining, yeah it wasn’t quite what I expected: “[we bought] silver paint, commercialised by a German company, that is made with waste silver powder collected by jewellery makers. It's like an urban mining technique of silver dust.” I was expecting them to find things and extract silver from them!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Thank you for pointing that out! I missed the context of the survival backpack and now it makes more sense. When you view this as more of a 'what if' for a somewhat (hopefully) fictional situation this becomes a fun challenge of creating PCBs from limited resources. I'm wondering how I might try to build a PCB under such circumstances now. I'm still not a fan of their 'urban mining' though. If anything I believe there would be better sources for silver in a disaster/post-apocalypse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I'm wondering how I might try to build a PCB under such circumstances now.

I imagine a realistic post apocalyptic scenario would involve going back to wire-wrapping, or possibly even point-to-point construction.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

AFAIK, urban mining is less about some post apocalyptic contingency, but rather, as the name implies: Sourcing material from any urban environment. This can include recycling, but also stuff like using material of demolished buildings, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

For that matter, there is probably better sources of copper in that scenario.