I just saw this presentation at the Chaos Computer Club conference, for an “Ethical Hardware Kit with a PCB microcontroller made of wild clay retrieved from the forest in Austria and fired on a bonfire. Our conductive tracks use urban-mined silver and all components are re-used from old electronic devices”. It was part of the feminist hardware strand!
Idk, this one is weird to me. I agree that micro electronics production is not conflict free and appreciate a search for alternatives, but clay? From an engineering perspective this isn’t just a bad material for PCBs, it’s neigh impossible to use. How would that affect device longevity, or recyclability? Their production process is quite failure prone as they mention. Not to mention how their design is easily magnitudes larger than a comparable laminated fiber PCB. Also urban-mined is a needlessly opaque buzzword imo. They mean recycled, right? Just say so, no need for flourishes. Emphasizing that the clay is sourced from a wild forest and burned over a bonfire is meant to feel sustainable via association. There is nothing environmentally conscious about these inefficient methods and it makes this project appear amateurish. Nothing wrong with amateur attempts to help the problem, but somehow I get the feeling no one bothered to ask a PCB fab worker or repair technician along the way. More sustainable PCBs start with open source documentation and freely available replacement parts, not forest clay. Full disclosure, I read the description text on the site and (only) skimmed through the video. Feel free to correct me if I misrepresented anything.
