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Hi all, my trusty old calculator won’t turn on, and it turns out one of the film contacts that cover the batteries is broken. Is there tape or glue that can repair the connection so the circuit will flow? See photo. Thanks!!!
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I think I'd be tempted to go with conductive paint rather than trying to work out how to connect in some copper tape. The circuit patterns seem to be printed on plastic, so any kind of soldering is right out the door; all you'd end up doing would be to destroy the circuitry.
Here's an example of the kind of thing I was thinking of; I'm sure a general internet search would turn up more choices.
Electronics Copper Conductive Paint Pen DIY Design Circuit Making Repair Tool UK - eBay
Using this it would just be a matter of tracing over the existing circuit with the paint, and hopefully that would be all that was needed. I'm not even sure what you'd end up doing with copper tape.
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Thank you, great idea! I see there is a paintbrush version also. It would have to bridge two parts that are severed.
@margret The conductive paint should be able to bridge a gap in the traces just fine. Just make sure that if there's a protective layer over the actual conductive traces, you'll have to scrape it off with something like an X-Acto knife so the paint actually contacts the circuit traces.
If you want to finish the job off like a professional, then once you have the traces reestablished, tested and working, the last step would be to coat your fix with something called solder mask that insulates the trace as it was originally. Entirely optional; it should work fine without, but if you wanted to, here's what I'm talking about.
Thanks again, greatly appreciated!!
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You can try copper tape. It looks to me like there's corrosion on the trace connected to the left battery. I'd highly suggest cleaning that up with isopropyl alcohol so you don't have more problems in the future.
Just curious, what calculator is this exactly?
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Thank you! I hope there’s copper tape that can be cut tiny enough…
This is a TI-30 Stat calculator from the late 1980s, which I got for high school precalculus. :) It worked just as always until recently.
crwdns2934271:0crwdnd2934271:0 Margret Graham crwdne2934271:0