Paper and cardboard circuits

papercircuits_01
A cou­ple of years ago i found out on the “inter­nets” that you don’t really need a pro­to­bo­ard or a cir­cuit board to make your cir­cuits come to life, the idea was to fold a pie­ce of paper with the cir­cuit design in it (com­po­nent side and cir­cuit dia­gram side) and then inser­ting a pie­ce of card­bo­ard in the middle.

The main idea was the eco, recy­cled “thingy” sin­ce cir­cuit boards are not so eco fri­en­dly and take a bun­ch of time to get recy­cled by our mother earth, also the eco­no­mic side (paper and card­bo­ard are almost free), ins­te­ad cir­cuit boar­ding takes a long time and it’s hazar­dous for the environment.

papercircuits_02
So here’s what i do :

1- print the sche­ma­tic you want (be sure to inclu­de on the she­et of paper both sides of the sche­ma­tic (com­po­nent side and schematic)

2‑fold it (the idea is to fold whe­re the com­po­nent side meets the schematic)

3‑cut a pie­ce of card­bo­ard and insert it in the mid­dle of the she­et of paper

4‑glue both sides on to the card­bo­ard (now you must have a beau­ti­full cir­cuit board made of cardboard)

5‑with a nee­dle pier­ce (com­po­nent side) all dril­ling holes into sche­ma­tic side

6‑insert the com­po­nents (resis­tors, ic, capa­ci­ta­tor etc..)

7‑turn it back (sche­ma­tic side) and start to sol­der (be sure to folow the tra­ces on the paper), the best way to do this is to sim­ply bend the leads of the com­po­nents and sol­der them together, if you have a lar­ge area were the lead is not long enough just use a wire or something similar.

8‑have fun