Not near enough surface area. The resistance trick works here because of the length of the conductor. You have less room to do this on a smaller project
I love the three replies I got, basically saying, you can't, he did, and it's not practical. On a channel where he makes very practical PCB motors? Ooh well just an idea 👍
@@OtherDalfite If a conductor has the same resistance per unit length, the same current will produce the same heat per unit length. A shorter conductor would have less resistance, so it would require less voltage to conduct the same current.
This also could be used for applications where the heater is covered afterwards (heated mugs.. with insulation on the outside, there the color change doesn't matter and the melting adhesive might be a good thing.)
Coffee tumbler with a little USB heater built in would be a pretty marketable product. It looks like there are a few on the market, but they all seem to have either an external heater or a puck on the bottom that heats the drink.
You should make a Snowboard with heated contact surface 🏂 and show us how it glides melting snow, should be way faster than a regular snowboard 🏂 please make it 🙏🏻
They have made ski boot heaters with flexible PCs for decades. Some heated footbeds were sold independently and could be used in shoes. Some skiboots had the batteries, switch, and heater element built into the boot. Some heating elements were only at the toes.
Those Hilbert curve traces look amazing! I wonder if you could make this into a Peltier thermocouple pad, with a second layer that uses iron traces instead of copper. That way you could get heating, cooling, and maybe even thermoelectric recovery in the same sticker. So far I haven't seen any flexible thermocouples out there. Could be worth trying, maybe?
That's not a Hilbert curve but it's an interesting idea: a Moore curve would leave the wire terminals together like his design and have only the centre with a long trackless section. It would be interesting to get Altium to fill with various depths of Moore curve to compare the different thicknesses...
This is an ideal drinks warmer for my Starbucks Cappuccino. I had a cup warmer that hooks up with USB which is a flat solid. The warming effect is not ideal since there is a space at the bottom of the paper cup. I had even made a circular disk to fill the bottom space with a lathe. But this one works perfectly since it wraps around the cups
My first thought is a cheap and easy stick-on heated bed upgrade for 3d printers that do not come with a heated bed, like cheap Chinese PLA-only printers, and older flashforge printers, and similar. It would also be interesting to see how this PCB behaves at 85 degrees c, a suitable temperature for printing PETG and nylon. also how it behaves stuck to a piece of spring steel (PEI powder coated spring steel sheet is a very common printing surface)
I wonder if it could be made into a long thin format so that it could be wrapped around water pipes to prevent freezing during winter. Might be difficult to test in Malta :P
for me as long as it works, thats what matters, i think ill use your pcb hotplate (the violet one) maybe cover it with some additional kapton or maybe some ceramic, it seems to do a decent job with reflowing pcbs, honestly anything that heats will discolour sooner or later, honestly why is the discolouration of the pcb a deal breaker for you?
because discoloration is a sign of material failure, and when an electronic device fails, they can cause a fire, and when a fire happens people get hurt
@@kevinbissinger but in this case the material is fine, its just the solder mask discolorating, if you have used a cloth iron you should know that after some time the coating on it also discolors and gets tarnished, pretty much you heat anything and it will break down, let it be fast or slowly, in his case to avoid the unfortunate circumstances putting a layer of kapton tape on the heater should be sufficient, i will definitely try this after i clear my current project on hand (it will take a while though) and will share my findings
Your work is very inspiring! I've seen the flapping coils an year ago for the first time, now I'm here to see them again in action.... I've got an idea to test, if it will work I'll send you a pic/video if you want 😀
Hi Carl. The look of the product is great. Why do you feel it should stick on and be removable of the glass. Is this the determined outcome you want? If so maybe a very dense gel might be better or a cover that slips over the glass to hold intimate contact to the glass. Like a stubby holder type concept.
Thanks! I was just curious about the outcome - given that it's a sticker it might not align well on the first attempt so I wanted to see if it could be resticked
Love your work brother. Your creativity and your level of knowledge is always inspiring ideas or problem solving approaches for me. Sla 3d printing could use these in winter. Cold resin doesn't print well. I've seen a few diy hacks with thermal bands and mini heaters. Both taking up alot of space inside the hood cover. These would easily stick to the inside walls of the hood and be out of the way for easier working conditions.
Oh cool! I've been thinking of making a custom heater with laser induced graphene made from kapton tape and a cheap laser engraver. Then would cover it with a thermochromic paint and turn the whole thing into a cool cup coaster that will show a custom logo when it turns on and heats up!
I thought about making it modular but the only problem with this is the variation of the resistance and the fact that you would need exposed coppers on the heater making it easy to short the traces when placed onto a conductive object
The perfect coffee drinking temp is (per google) less than 155F (68C) so it might make a nice heated mug! The only issue I see is mugs are typically have high insulation, so transferring heat from the heater through a ceramic surface might not work great; There are coffee thermos that are hollow and use air to insulate. They are even built in two parts so you could pop the heater on the inside! Also this video seem quiet compared to other videos.
If you add some thin temperature sensors and a conformal coating this would be perfect for seed starting. Commercial heating pads are very expensive, inaccurate and use mains voltage. This could run off of a 12/24V power supply and an Arduino+Mosfet and keep a perfect temperature.
I agree! An integrated thermistor would be great, an integrated thermostatic control system, allowing it to be plugged into 5V/12V/24V and produce a regulated temperature would be even better!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this would be great for reptile heaters. The temperatures are low and being able to hit ~112 C at 5V is more than sufficient for either long term use or serving as low-powered heaters in the case of power failures. I'm definitely interested in the low-temp long-term use. I might have to see if I can't get a few from PCBWay for some 'testing' of my own.
So amazing what you do, tell me, you do this as your full time job? or in what do you work beside your youtube channel? seeing your projects and expertise keep me stay afloat on continue my electronic projects and not fall in my depression. thanks a lot man
If these work really well as is, I think I’ll have some made for my LiFePO4 batteries that will live in an old military truck. I’d only be using it to keep the batteries at about 40F so that there is no permanent damage done when I go to start a big engine in the very cold mornings.
You don't need large thermal stickers to heat the whole mug or body. You only need to heat 15-20% of the area and the fluid will precipitate itself to exchange the heat. This is how body warming gloves and wrist bands work.
What would be completely awesome would be a heat sticker that goes on the _bottom_ of the mug and works by induction with a base plate that could be plugged in. I have a "Mr. Coffee" brand of mug-heater, which is really just a small hotplate, but the heat transfer to the mug is kind of crap and it doesn't keep my beverage very warm at all. Something waterproof and wireless that just adheres to the bottom of the mug--stick it on and forget about it--would be awesome.
Honestly, I'd say those "snap bracelet" things would probably be a better mounting option than adhesive. No idea where to get them or how to mount them to the flex pcb though.
Seeing all the shots of using it with a glass of water made me wonder - how about a sous-vide heater? Most commercial ones use quite localised heaters so need circulating pumps but a large mat would not take up any space in the water bath and should provide a more even heat source.
The circulating pump is needed to increase the thermal transfer to the food, keeping it from spending too long at temperatures that would breed bacteria. You could probably use a magnetic stir bar if you wanted to remove the requirement for a pump, though. At any rate, your idea has merit since it would let you make the machine more compact and streamlined.
Besides being discolored will it begin to actually fail? Resizing it and sticking it to a metal sheet for like a heated coaster with a target temperature around 90 degrees seems like a great application so long as it could do it forever. Color wouldn't matter.and reuseability wouldn't matter.
Hi Carl, please design a PCB for metal detecting with the coil baked into the PCB. The only ones I've found online are sensitive to 60mm distance maximum.
Kudos to you. Great design. As an alternative, using Silicon + Nichrome wire would make better heater for long term use. In these PCB Heater, I wonder how heat is generated as you are not using Nichrome wire. I know Copper is not good at being Heating element, so what is it, which heats the PCB?
Hello my friend, while watching you i have get another idea, may you create strain-gauges ? Actually please 🤗🤗🤗 i have so curious how could we produce it ? (Flexible pcb ? )
I know there are already heated jackets out there, but they don't seem to run for that long. With fairly big batteries. How long do you think these would run on battery? Would be running at 25-30*c i guess. And i'm thinking 18650's? I guess my question is, how efficient are these? what kind of power would you need to run them as "portable heaters" and how long would they run? Nice vid, and really cool project!
What about using this technique for heated clothing? Not as the clothing itself but embedded between layers of fabric. Cooler temps(relatively) I would hope support much much longer operation times. Thoughts? Concerns?
Why did you not add cut-outs to the polyimide substrate-layer to act as a strain-relief? I have a cheap-ass workhorse 3dPrinter (2015 vintage) that uses an adhesive-backed flex-pcb heater for the bed. The discoloration, from my experience, is just cosmetic, and does not affect the heating nor safety.
Reducing the gaps makes the temperature more constant across the whole board.. There is also the issue of resistance - ideally it is kept under 1ohm so it operates with lower voltage levels and higher currents
What are you doing to get these down to a reasonable unit price for prototyping? Every time I've looked at flex PCBs (including your sponsor), the 10x-30x increase over traditional PCBs has precluded their use.
used to dry 3d filament as well? I have had my printer for over a year now (and loving the QIDI x-Plus with the use of FreeCAD) but I have not seen any good way to dry the filament itself. Looking at how the printer prints, I am wondering why there isn't a radiator type drying unit that you feed the filament in and as it moves slowly to the printer it dries it as well?
Great video once again! :D Besides the color change of the heatsticker. Is it working just as good from when you started the tests to when you ended the tests? - or has its performance decreased? / Jacob
Dude, you just reinvented heat tape. This really does open a lot more applications though, other than keeping pipes from freezing. You really could take this farther.
I made one of these patches using a 15-year-old roll of flexible floor heating leftover from when we built our house and used it to keep our pet bunnies nest warm in the winter. I could just cut it to size and power it and it worked perfectly. So not really a new concept.
this is hands-down the coolest PCB you've made so far, I love the idea of any surface potentially becoming heated regardless of its shape
Adhesive silicone heaters are a thing, and they're very useful. They also are designed for this purpose.
*hottest
Could you make self heating/soldering circuit boards? With an internal layer heater that's only used once to solder the components on?
Not near enough surface area. The resistance trick works here because of the length of the conductor. You have less room to do this on a smaller project
I dont think thats really all that practical, but if you mess up enough you can easily get a self desoldering circuit board :D
I love the three replies I got, basically saying, you can't, he did, and it's not practical. On a channel where he makes very practical PCB motors? Ooh well just an idea 👍
@@OtherDalfite If a conductor has the same resistance per unit length, the same current will produce the same heat per unit length. A shorter conductor would have less resistance, so it would require less voltage to conduct the same current.
@@kennethstudstill true. The hard part is pushing high currents at low voltages. This is usually why you need a lot of surface area
Nice concept.
Putting those under a snowboard.
or inside boots..
Lots of applications
This also could be used for applications where the heater is covered afterwards (heated mugs.. with insulation on the outside, there the color change doesn't matter and the melting adhesive might be a good thing.)
Coffee tumbler with a little USB heater built in would be a pretty marketable product. It looks like there are a few on the market, but they all seem to have either an external heater or a puck on the bottom that heats the drink.
@@namAehT Also they are so expensive!
Cool design. I love the idea of thermal stickers.
This is rather interesting!
Could see it perhaps working with a qi charging coil at the bottom, to have wireless charging pads as heating coasters.
You should make a Snowboard with heated contact surface 🏂 and show us how it glides melting snow, should be way faster than a regular snowboard 🏂 please make it 🙏🏻
They have made ski boot heaters with flexible PCs for decades. Some heated footbeds were sold independently and could be used in shoes. Some skiboots had the batteries, switch, and heater element built into the boot. Some heating elements were only at the toes.
Those Hilbert curve traces look amazing! I wonder if you could make this into a Peltier thermocouple pad, with a second layer that uses iron traces instead of copper. That way you could get heating, cooling, and maybe even thermoelectric recovery in the same sticker. So far I haven't seen any flexible thermocouples out there. Could be worth trying, maybe?
That's not a Hilbert curve but it's an interesting idea: a Moore curve would leave the wire terminals together like his design and have only the centre with a long trackless section.
It would be interesting to get Altium to fill with various depths of Moore curve to compare the different thicknesses...
nice now i got an idea for a diy 3d printer heated bed
Everyone is speaking about the amazing video quality, but I just want to say that your dog is very cute
Your videos are looking more and more professional over time! Please, keep doing this great work!
Awesome! I was literally thinking about personal heaters an hour ago and got home and saw this!
Amazing making me love flexable pcbs more and more!
The discoloration is not ugly it is beautiful and looks better with time and showing signs of usage
This is an ideal drinks warmer for my Starbucks Cappuccino.
I had a cup warmer that hooks up with USB which is a flat solid.
The warming effect is not ideal since there is a space at the bottom of the paper cup.
I had even made a circular disk to fill the bottom space with a lathe.
But this one works perfectly since it wraps around the cups
My first thought is a cheap and easy stick-on heated bed upgrade for 3d printers that do not come with a heated bed, like cheap Chinese PLA-only printers, and older flashforge printers, and similar. It would also be interesting to see how this PCB behaves at 85 degrees c, a suitable temperature for printing PETG and nylon. also how it behaves stuck to a piece of spring steel (PEI powder coated spring steel sheet is a very common printing surface)
Flexible PCB Temperature Controlled Crystal Oscillator when? get them PPMs!
Your concepts make me really rethink about pcb design, appreciate it mate!
Heating coaster are just up this alley
I wonder if it could be made into a long thin format so that it could be wrapped around water pipes to prevent freezing during winter. Might be difficult to test in Malta :P
'tape heaters' are a thing already. Used all the time in industry and science.
The ring pro doorbell camera uses a flexible heater to warm the li-po battery in cold weather.
for me as long as it works, thats what matters, i think ill use your pcb hotplate (the violet one) maybe cover it with some additional kapton or maybe some ceramic, it seems to do a decent job with reflowing pcbs, honestly anything that heats will discolour sooner or later, honestly why is the discolouration of the pcb a deal breaker for you?
because discoloration is a sign of material failure, and when an electronic device fails, they can cause a fire, and when a fire happens people get hurt
I think it's because it is supose to be reusable. Color change could means degradation, so it might not be that reusable.
@@kevinbissinger but in this case the material is fine, its just the solder mask discolorating, if you have used a cloth iron you should know that after some time the coating on it also discolors and gets tarnished, pretty much you heat anything and it will break down, let it be fast or slowly, in his case to avoid the unfortunate circumstances putting a layer of kapton tape on the heater should be sufficient, i will definitely try this after i clear my current project on hand (it will take a while though) and will share my findings
Your work is very inspiring! I've seen the flapping coils an year ago for the first time, now I'm here to see them again in action.... I've got an idea to test, if it will work I'll send you a pic/video if you want 😀
I think it would be a good heater for an aquarium. It could be on the under side of the aquarium an it will only get to temperatures under 40°c
Hi Carl. The look of the product is great. Why do you feel it should stick on and be removable of the glass. Is this the determined outcome you want? If so maybe a very dense gel might be better or a cover that slips over the glass to hold intimate contact to the glass. Like a stubby holder type concept.
Thanks! I was just curious about the outcome - given that it's a sticker it might not align well on the first attempt so I wanted to see if it could be resticked
I would like to see more experiments with this type of pcb. I see some potentials here!
Love your work brother. Your creativity and your level of knowledge is always inspiring ideas or problem solving approaches for me. Sla 3d printing could use these in winter. Cold resin doesn't print well. I've seen a few diy hacks with thermal bands and mini heaters. Both taking up alot of space inside the hood cover. These would easily stick to the inside walls of the hood and be out of the way for easier working conditions.
Oh cool! I've been thinking of making a custom heater with laser induced graphene made from kapton tape and a cheap laser engraver. Then would cover it with a thermochromic paint and turn the whole thing into a cool cup coaster that will show a custom logo when it turns on and heats up!
How about trying different sizes or shapes. Or even make it modular(like cutting led strips to the desired lenght).
I thought about making it modular but the only problem with this is the variation of the resistance and the fact that you would need exposed coppers on the heater making it easy to short the traces when placed onto a conductive object
The perfect coffee drinking temp is (per google) less than 155F (68C) so it might make a nice heated mug! The only issue I see is mugs are typically have high insulation, so transferring heat from the heater through a ceramic surface might not work great; There are coffee thermos that are hollow and use air to insulate. They are even built in two parts so you could pop the heater on the inside!
Also this video seem quiet compared to other videos.
Actually in a previous job at a biotech company we used flex pcb as heater for a pcr reaction in an actual product
If you add some thin temperature sensors and a conformal coating this would be perfect for seed starting.
Commercial heating pads are very expensive, inaccurate and use mains voltage.
This could run off of a 12/24V power supply and an Arduino+Mosfet and keep a perfect temperature.
I agree! An integrated thermistor would be great, an integrated thermostatic control system, allowing it to be plugged into 5V/12V/24V and produce a regulated temperature would be even better!
Looking good man, love the work
I've said it before and I'll say it again, this would be great for reptile heaters. The temperatures are low and being able to hit ~112 C at 5V is more than sufficient for either long term use or serving as low-powered heaters in the case of power failures. I'm definitely interested in the low-temp long-term use. I might have to see if I can't get a few from PCBWay for some 'testing' of my own.
Would be great to place like 2 in a tank and warm the sand above them
So amazing what you do, tell me, you do this as your full time job? or in what do you work beside your youtube channel? seeing your projects and expertise keep me stay afloat on continue my electronic projects and not fall in my depression. thanks a lot man
If these work really well as is, I think I’ll have some made for my LiFePO4 batteries that will live in an old military truck. I’d only be using it to keep the batteries at about 40F so that there is no permanent damage done when I go to start a big engine in the very cold mornings.
You don't need large thermal stickers to heat the whole mug or body. You only need to heat 15-20% of the area and the fluid will precipitate itself to exchange the heat. This is how body warming gloves and wrist bands work.
your builds are so awesome :)
What would be completely awesome would be a heat sticker that goes on the _bottom_ of the mug and works by induction with a base plate that could be plugged in. I have a "Mr. Coffee" brand of mug-heater, which is really just a small hotplate, but the heat transfer to the mug is kind of crap and it doesn't keep my beverage very warm at all. Something waterproof and wireless that just adheres to the bottom of the mug--stick it on and forget about it--would be awesome.
Honestly, I'd say those "snap bracelet" things would probably be a better mounting option than adhesive. No idea where to get them or how to mount them to the flex pcb though.
Seeing all the shots of using it with a glass of water made me wonder - how about a sous-vide heater?
Most commercial ones use quite localised heaters so need circulating pumps but a large mat would not take up any space in the water bath and should provide a more even heat source.
The circulating pump is needed to increase the thermal transfer to the food, keeping it from spending too long at temperatures that would breed bacteria. You could probably use a magnetic stir bar if you wanted to remove the requirement for a pump, though. At any rate, your idea has merit since it would let you make the machine more compact and streamlined.
Besides being discolored will it begin to actually fail? Resizing it and sticking it to a metal sheet for like a heated coaster with a target temperature around 90 degrees seems like a great application so long as it could do it forever. Color wouldn't matter.and reuseability wouldn't matter.
Hi Carl, please design a PCB for metal detecting with the coil baked into the PCB. The only ones I've found online are sensitive to 60mm distance maximum.
Kudos to you. Great design. As an alternative, using Silicon + Nichrome wire would make better heater for long term use. In these PCB Heater, I wonder how heat is generated as you are not using Nichrome wire. I know Copper is not good at being Heating element, so what is it, which heats the PCB?
My first thought for use was a heat source for germinating seeds, or just keeping small plant pots at an optimal temperature.
Depending how long it takes to heat up it might be useful in 3D printing where you need to heat up bed to 60 c to print PLA on it.
They already have exactly this thing on 99% of all 3D printers, the other 1% uses silicone AC powered heaters.
You should make One with Hilbert fractal pattern
Awesome.
This reminds me of a lizard tank heating mat
Hello my friend, while watching you i have get another idea, may you create strain-gauges ? Actually please 🤗🤗🤗 i have so curious how could we produce it ? (Flexible pcb ? )
A new continent you just found out! Perfectly for the severe winter.👍❤
Wow 🤗
I know there are already heated jackets out there, but they don't seem to run for that long. With fairly big batteries.
How long do you think these would run on battery? Would be running at 25-30*c i guess. And i'm thinking 18650's?
I guess my question is, how efficient are these? what kind of power would you need to run them as "portable heaters" and how long would they run?
Nice vid, and really cool project!
awesome!
I'd love to see making flexible strain gauge PCB's
What about using this technique for heated clothing? Not as the clothing itself but embedded between layers of fabric. Cooler temps(relatively) I would hope support much much longer operation times. Thoughts? Concerns?
Why did you not add cut-outs to the polyimide substrate-layer to act as a strain-relief?
I have a cheap-ass workhorse 3dPrinter (2015 vintage) that uses an adhesive-backed flex-pcb heater for the bed. The discoloration, from my experience, is just cosmetic, and does not affect the heating nor safety.
Should make it in black; make the discoloring less noticeable
Are you going to release the designs? I have a great purpose for this heating solution for modifying and editing PCL (polycaprolactone)
why not thinner tracks to reduce the strain on the copperless parts of track gap flex material?
Reducing the gaps makes the temperature more constant across the whole board.. There is also the issue of resistance - ideally it is kept under 1ohm so it operates with lower voltage levels and higher currents
Could you run one these thru 100 cycles of heating (to 100°C) and cooling to see if that causes some issues?
Can you make hand shaped heaters to put into gloves?
I need socks with this tech unless it's summer my toes are always so cold
Can you also try 4oz copper? Perhaps decrease the serpentine trace width but use thicker trace, to increase the strength and robustness.
What are you doing to get these down to a reasonable unit price for prototyping? Every time I've looked at flex PCBs (including your sponsor), the 10x-30x increase over traditional PCBs has precluded their use.
used to dry 3d filament as well? I have had my printer for over a year now (and loving the QIDI x-Plus with the use of FreeCAD) but I have not seen any good way to dry the filament itself. Looking at how the printer prints, I am wondering why there isn't a radiator type drying unit that you feed the filament in and as it moves slowly to the printer it dries it as well?
add wireless power through a coaster and you got yourself a million dollar kickstarter lol
Use a magnetic backing rather than a glue based one. Reduces possible applications but would do wonders for durability and reusability
High temperature magnets are expensive and not flexible.
you could use Lithium ceramic batteries and a flexible bms to make it all in one piece
i was just wondering, don´t these already exist for 3d Printers?
Nice.. a Stroopwaffel warmer.
Just food for thought but super slim heated clothing
Can you make flexible PCB coils for planar headphones 🎧? 😀😃😁
That already exists, google: "Kapton heater mat". They are used quite frequently for 3D printer's beds with sticky side and all.
It coud be used as a dew heater for astrophotography, except it needs to be much cooler ;)
Great video once again! :D
Besides the color change of the heatsticker. Is it working just as good from when you started the tests to when you ended the tests? - or has its performance decreased?
/ Jacob
Thanks! I only noticed a dis-coloring issue the performance was still okay until I tried to peel off the heater 😅
do u have a altium designer tutorial?
Surely it would be better to use a carbon based ink and screen print?
Hexagon?
What about a Cooling Sticker?
id love some of these to put under my bike grips, wouldnt need it above 25c ever haha
Heated bike grips are already a thing.
Dude, you just reinvented heat tape. This really does open a lot more applications though, other than keeping pipes from freezing. You really could take this farther.
Can you add some details to your GitHub page, so we know what details to plug into the PCBWay website? Thanks.
would be great to see 72 hour life test for 5V 2 amp so it can be powered from a generic 5v power bank.
Man discovers flexible heating pads
I made one of these patches using a 15-year-old roll of flexible floor heating leftover from when we built our house and used it to keep our pet bunnies nest warm in the winter. I could just cut it to size and power it and it worked perfectly. So not really a new concept.
Where can we get this stickers?
SLA resin printer vat heater!
Do you sell this thermal stickers ?
If you could get this to keep your cup warm on a wireless charger you'd be a millionaire
2:20 so... by "PCB maze" you mean array of swastikas?
Hot water bottle rubber, molded, with a belt strap to tighten it.
why not as an tennis insole with a tiny battery
how about drowning it into resin ?
Hey with this information make a non flex one lol it will work better :)
Can I buy some?
you needed to measure fumes around those PCBs
I liked the subscribe button.
Wish there was flexible peltier