Comment on Does anyone have any advice on how to make homemade conductive paint to fix a. cracked carbon trace in a game controller?

• over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Nah, no need for a new device, all the actual game controls actually work after I glued the crack and solderes bridge wires over all the broke copper traces.

  The only button that doesn’t work is the Mode button, which swaps the D-Pad and left analog. Its default mode is the normal mode you’d expect anyways, so fixing the Mode button is totally optional.

  It’s just a bit tempting to get the controller back 100% functional, but it’s not terribly important.

  I was kind of curious to dabble around and learn ways to make conductive paint at home, and use the controller as a first test try.

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  • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    crush up some graphite really finely in a mortar (from a good source, like the carbon rods in some batteries or soft pencil leads, as the hard ones contain clay), mix with glue, play with ratios (the more graphite the better, but it might start cracking with too much graphite) and type of glue (elmers, superglue, epoxy, etc)

    but i’ll warn you that it’s gonna work kinda bad compared to finding where the carbon trace originates and soldering a wire there (there’s gotta be metal somewhere)

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    • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Those all sound like a good set of options indeed. I’m kinda hoping to be able to use silicone glue, but any which way, I’ll be testing on sample cards first before applying anything to the board.

      Unfortunately, even if I find the metal trace it connects to, the very end of the carbon trace is a dead end, it functions as one side of the rubber plunger button contact pad. So the fix has to be carbon trace friendly, soldering simply isn’t an option here.

      Thanks for the thoughts and advice 👍

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