Soft Circuit Workshop

 My Technique Report is  on copper  particle conductivity  water based paint from Less EMF  which primary use is for RFI/EMI sheilding  for  plastic electronic equipment housing, wallboards,wood and claen metals.Yet I wanted to use this paint  on fabric  for my final project . Since I am using silk for my final project I decided to test on several pieces of silk  . What was nice about the silk is that it did absord the paint however when the paint dried it became hard. When the paint is on the fabric you do get conductivity, however when the fabric is bent or folded, the paint dose tend to crack and  crumble off the fabric and you loose conductivity. 

   The paint tends to have no conductivity  when fabric  paints  are applied   directly on it but have  various degrees of conductivity  usually very little to none when mixed with acrylic paint. It seems that the amount of water which is mixed in the arylic paint effects the conductivity greatly. What was also interesting is that the acrylic  paint can also interfere with conductivity in the fabric  when there is conducivity .What I mean is that certain areas may not work if there is acyrlic paint in between to conductive areas.  

  Although there was one fabric which worked very well with the conductive paint this is not really a fabric it’s  spun bound olefin called Tyvek it’s made by Dupont company  and has been used  for various uses such as packages, paper  and disposable products but   it’s durable and strong and works very well with the conductive paint . I added acrylic paint ad still had conductivity but still had a bit of the conductivity interference wherever there was acrylic paint inbetween two conductive points .But   I even bent and folded the tyvek and it did not crumble. I find that this paint is probably best for it’s intened use  howerver I believe that artist /designers can use this paint on canvasand perhaps use the conductive paint in an interior or exterior boundry  of their art or projects  and even experiement with tyvek