Consult for the Conductive Circuit Card Company
This Valentine bug card is an example of the kind of conductive paint LED prototype card your students can make.Copyright 2020 Stefi Weisburd, University of New Mexico (NASCENT ERC)
Students engage as engineering consultants for a firm called the “Conductive Circuit Card Company” to design and make a prototype greeting card using conductive paints. This company has made its LED light-up cards using copper tape for its circuits, but the company has determined that it takes too long to apply the tape. In line with the industry’s shift to printing circuits, the company has purchased a flexible electronics printing machine. Student reverse-engineer a copper tape card, analyzing how to constructs its circuit elements. They design and create a new circuit element using stencils and conductive paint.
Student consultants in this activity experience a taste of this manufacturing process by analyzing how an electric circuit is constructed and then print and test their own circuit using conductive paints on a flexible substrate (paper). Students engage in the engineering design process by following a set of parameters and exploring how to build a circuit and product within those parameters.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain how the different elements of a simple LED circuit work.
- Explain a circuit.
- Build and troubleshoot an LED card.