Learn how to sew conductive thread onto fabric to create “soft circuits” with this detailed tutorial. From the site, “Attempts to imagine an alternate way of building circuits using fabric and thread and replacing the soldering iron with a needle. The results are washable, flexible, light and soft circuits. Possibilities endless (kind of). These circuits rely heavily on the use of conductive thread, you should consider the type of application and signal you need to transmit before trying to build anything out of thread.” Link.
8 thoughts on “Soft Circuits”
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Not really washable if you’re attaching components to it, but cool nevertheless – I’ll have to try this on my next thrift store jacket.
By the way, the link’s broken – missing starting ‘h’.
Thanks! All fixed. :)
A couple of things I’ve been meaning to try but haven’t gotten around to yet:
– If you have an existing board with through-hole contacts around the periphery that you want to interface this way, try making a photocopy of the board and iron the image onto your cloth. Then you’ll have a very easy starting point for hand-drawn circuits.
– Scan in your existing board, then draw in the remainder of the circuit in your graphics editor of choice (Gimp or InkScape for example). Print to laser printer or ink-jet printer and iron on the resulting image.
How well the toner washes away remains to be seen. A multi-function inkjet scanner-to-printer may work better (or worse) than a laser-based equivalent.
Enjoy!
Andrew.
Depends on what you are doing it is washable. surface mount LED’s are mostly washable as long as they are sewed in well. When you make it you should aim to unplug bulky components. :)
enjoy!