Conductive Ink Pen: Draw Circuits Instantly

Very conductive but hard to use. The ball-point tip is useless. I pulled the pen apart and used a tiny artists brush, dipping it directly into the pen tube. This works quite well -- although the line you get depends entirely on your dexterity. I was able to get pretty consistent lines 0.1 inch wide. However, line width less than 0.25 inch requires some skill. You need at least two coats, and think about five. Look at your line with a good (20X) magnifier. If it looks continuous it is. If you see any tiny gaps, it is not. My lines easily handled 20 mA. You can clean the brush with lacquer thinner, BUT lacquer thinner is nasty so put some serious safety precautions HERE. The lines you paint MUST be dry. They do not conduct when wet. With the brush, I could easily paint circuit board and plastics. Also, I could solder to it (to my surprise). Once dry, the paint is pretty rugged. You can cut lines through it easily with a sharp x-acto knife. Overall, it handles similar to hobby paint. I gave this five stars because it is pretty amazing stuff. It is not easy to use and you do not get much paint in one pen. It is not suitable for children.

Amazing stuff! Broke some off a small run of PCB circuit on my laptop while doing upgrade/maintenance. Machine would not boot up with that break. Purchased a two pack just in case one pen didn't work (read a few reviews of dead pens). Good thing I did! One pen would refuse to work, second one works perfectly fine! Applied over the break and let it dry. Took an ohm meter and had near zero resistance. Buttoned up the machine and it's working again! Let's see how long it lasts now.

I bought this to fix some conductive pads inside a remote control. This did work, but the conductive ink from this pen will not permanently adhere to the silicone pads in the remote. It only stayed on their briefly, for a few touches and then the remote again lost its functionality. Note that the sellers of this pen do not say it would work for the purpose I used. I think it works fine for making temporary "practice" circuits. But anything that needs durability is going to be questionable. I did experience some poor delivery of the product, but that was remedied by shaking. For remote control repair, what I would now recommend is using small round dots of aluminum foil and a silicone adhesive to attach them to the pads inside the remote. This was the fix for me. Just use an appropriate sized punch to make dots from aluminum foil (I used a leather punch and stacked paper and foil). Silicone adhesive is available at hardware stores for a few dollars.

2 pens came order, 1 does not work at all. The second one is poor at best.

Used this today for a Ham Radio modification. (MARS) This pen made short work of it. So much better than getting out the soldering iron! KM4QGZ 73

So, I bought two of these pens to use in a machine printer to try to write a circuit. I've tried it on paper and kraft board and it worked on both (I will be testing it on acrylic although I already see limitations on printing a very small circuit due to the roller pen's large size and the potential for the ink to bleed over). Continuity worked just fine. I don't know yet if it's capable of handling more complex circuits but I was drawing out an arduino test circuit board - a very small one, that required a machine to print it. Like all the suggestions, whipped this pen till the silver was loose. However, the machine pushes hard, so it stopped producing ink very quickly (I don't know if that's limited to paper products only, yet). I figured out that I have to set the printer to frequent stop intervals to pull the pen back out, reshake it, realign it, and run it (which could be problematic and make this entire venture useless). It would not be good for trying to do a large area or multiple ups if the ink cannot stay continuously running. I have not tested it for with actual circuitry components (will do that soon), only conductivity, and no problems. For kids and as a hobby project to get them into STEM: this is a must. HOWEVER - BUY conductive glue to connect your circuit components! This would be a HUGE boost to educational STEM education at the middle to high school levels, too. Allow kids to practice making circuits. Even as an adult, if you wanted to learn about circuitry and were taking a course, if you had the conductive glue and components, you could make a LOT of circuits, very fast, and get a lot of good practice in with this tool. Soldering is important, too - but by the time you get there, you might as well learn how to etch copper. So, for kids or education, a 5 out of 5 stars. For industrial or commercial prototyping, so far we're at a 1 or 2 stars. I'll update after I work with this on an acrylic and 3D printed board with the machine to see if it can be used that way. I also am intending on using it with a flexible board to see how it works for that...

Ok, I'm sure the manufacturer would never suggest this, but I am because it works. I received the pen and, like many, it was dry. Wouldn't draw. FYI It's a cheap ball point pen with conductive ink. My hack with all cheap pens, put it in my mouth and suck without touching the tip in my mouth. The negative pressure is necessary to get the ink flowing. After do this about 4 or 5 times and trying to write on a piece of paper, the ink finally began to flow (and flow surprisingly well)! After that, I used it on a thin plastic multi-function keypad/joystick trace that was broken. I was able to get continuity! Now I'm going to let it sit for a few days to thoroughly dry (some people were complaining it takes a long time to dry). If this works I will be back to update my review, but I think all in all, my hack is really what everyone needs to know. Is the ink toxic? Let's hope not LOL because this is the perfect item for fixing small flexible traces!

Nice

Reçu dans les délais, conforme à la description, pédagogique et ludique pour les enfants, j'ai testé et les contacts sont fait sur une feuille de papier !

Lo he itilizado para arreglar un teclado antiguo y ha funcionaso bien

Genau, was ich gesucht habe! Spitze ähnlich eines Kugelschreibers. Sehr feine Striche möglich und die Leitfähigkeit ist Spitze! Tipp: Sollte nichts aus der Spitze kommen, einfach kurz kräftig schütteln. Dann gehts weiter. Kleckert nicht, ist präzise und Preis/Leistung sehr gut.

Worked great

Good conductivity