Francisco writes – “I’ve been cutting two different kinds of shapes, really kitschy holiday shapes and somewhat kitschy geometric shapes…All of these shapes are made from either dead or seriously obsolete circuit boards, pulled from various items – motherboards, hard drive/floppy/cd drive controllers, ethernet/sound/video cards, etc. Not all boards are equal – some are thinner, some thicker, some are light brown, some are traditional green. “ – Link.
6 thoughts on “Circuit board art”
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If you like the look of this stuff, and are about to rip your A500 motherboard into the shape of a lobster, be aware of the heinous toxicity of PCBs and take precautions.
From the pictures, this process make A LOT of dust, and PCB dust is full of lead and other heavy metals, as well as icky toxic flame retardants. This concoction will be incredibly nasty when turned to dust and fumes with some crafty dremel work.
I imagine you’d need a pretty heavy-duty respirator, and skin coverings to make this dust safe.
“Printed Circuit Boards contain heavy metals such as Antimony, Silver, Chromium, Zinc, Lead, Tin and Copper. According to some estimates there is hardly any other product for which the sum of the environmental impacts of raw material, extraction, industrial, refining and production, use and disposal is so extensive as for printed circuit boards. ”
– /CARE conference, Vienna, 1994, @ /http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/sayno.htm
I am using PCB’s as art too, however I do not cut, drill, saw or heat them, mostly I just glue other stuff to them. Is this safe? I am hoping all the bad bits are inert till disturbed?
Good to know about what’s in the boards; I DID go about cutting into one with a dremel once and it produced an enormous amount of dust and fumes. Everything within a 5 foot radius was absolutely covered in the stuff. Not fun to clean the workshop, or bathe myself. Realizing I had NO idea what the dust was made of, I abandoned the project.
Sounds like a pretty stupid thing to do, now that I think about it.