Fabricating Printed Circuit Wooden-board using Affordable Laser Cutting Machine

Abstract

We propose a method and workflow for producing various sensors and electrical circuits for interactive devices by partially carbonizing the wood surface with a laser cutting machine. Similar to wiring on a conventional printed circuit board (PCB), the carbonized part functions as a conductive electrical path. A method for creating electronic circuits and sensors made of carbon graphene has been proposed. This technique makes use of a raster-scanning femtosecond (fs) laser, which is less common for personal fabrication than a constant-wave (CW) laser. Moreover, raster-scanning requires a substantial amount of time to create a circuit that is mainly made of conductive lines. This paper extends the method with a defocused vector-scanning CW laser beam and reduces the time and cost required for fabrication. The proposed method uses an affordable CW laser cutter to fabricate a circuit, including touch sensors, damage sensors, and load sensors on wood boards. The circuit can be easily connected to conventional PCBs and electric parts such as one-board microcomputers using metal screws and nails typically used in DIY woodworking.