CircuitWriter Conductive Ink, silver-based, 4g

First, let me recommend buying from Micro Tools. I ordered this Friday and Monday, I've got my order, rapid shipping and it arrived with a cool sample of Hand e Glove that I'll try next time I pop the hood of my car. Also, the product looked as if I'd picked it up at the store, complete with packaging. Now to my review thus far and why I'm rating this before the trace dries.Recently, an Evo 3D I bought as a hobby phone from a friend has been down for months because the lcd back light failed when I touched the screen while it was plugged into a rapid car charger. I cracked open the phone with my trusty torx screwdriver, and noticed what appears to be a burn spot on the circuits trace for the lcd to mother board. My options were as follows, buy a new lcd and muck with melting the working digitizer off and hoping that, when glued together, the new lcd fits with the digitizer (the front screen that allows your touch to make stuff happen), otherwise I'd have to muck with it all some more and melt/reapply the assembly.Orrrrr, I could first try that which I'm doing right now. It appears that a portion of the flex cable has an arc burn on it, the fact that the lcd is showing things but not lighting up indicates to me that the lcd is functional, given that the portion of the flex cable that's burnt marred a few traces, seemingly, in the middle of the cable, the way I figure it, one just has to get connectivity again. However, conventional soldering is not possible for a few reasons.1. The heat involved and the size of the gun. This is a thin plastic circuit that's delicate, saying it was possible to get the gun optimally positioned, it'd still run the risk of doing further damage on both the solder side and also the guns side.2. The precision required. No matter how fine the tip of the gun, or how fine the solder, the equipment is far too bulky to draw a mm thick line.So, those being the main concerns, I did research, given that I'm fond of silver solder due to its conductivity values, I wanted something that allows me to take full advantage of its marvelous properties.While surfing the www's I saw what I felt was a good heatless solution, silver filled pens. I searched high and low but only found solutions good for heat syncing but not concentrated enough for circuit tracing, that's where Circuit Writer comes in, it has a high ratio of silver particles: solution, and according to the more knowledgeable reviews is just what the doctor ordered as a perfect substitute for the wonderful benefits of heated soldering.Initially, I was pensive about ordering it because of the price and also the idea that the applicator might be clumsy (I was thinking of the ball applicator of silver paint pens used for decorating, also, seeing some of these reviews that thought was reinforce) just got the pen today and was surprised that, indeed, the tip is very fine, and the pen is a lot bigger than I'd anticipated in a good way (lots of solution).I just applied the compound and, per directions, am letting it cure for 24 hours. I'm crossing my fingers that this resolves the issue, if it doesn't, at least I've got a useful tool for the future.I'd recommend this to anyone in a heartbeat for situations involving tight spaces and where soldering just isn't feasible. What I'd NOT recommend buying this for is soldering joints or components, definitely seems to be more for writing circuits, and not for strength and conductivity. I'll edit this part if I try it and it's acceptable, but would not want someone to purchase it thinking they'll get the same strength benefits as solid core silver, or good old rosin core lead as it is a compound and not a solid state.

I bought a Corsair K57 keyboard for my wife. My cat barfed on it three weeks after I bought it for her. The cat barf was enough to corrode the flimsy, uncoated traces on the flex ribbon underneath the keyboard membranes. It wasn't the membrane press parts that corroded; it was the trace wires connecting to the press pads that corroded, but this product should handily work in either area. I used this pen to coat the corroded traces, and much to my surprise, it actually worked. The paint goes on about as thin as you can expect it to go on, so it will work with fine traces. It does not dry clumpy or leave a thick mound. It's very thin but dense, which is probably good. The paint is a shiny silver color. It's not the dark carbon color you see in other varieties. If you bridge connections you did not mean to bridge with this pen, you can use an exacto knife to scrape away the excess paint. The paint scrapes away fairly well and does not cause big chunks of the trace to break away when scraped. You can use a ~40W incandescent desk lamp to make the paint dry very quick rather than waiting for it to air dry over hours. I've never used the more expensive versions of this type of product. I paid ~$25 for this pen and I imagine the $45 versions aren't much better.

I've used this product in the past, it always worked very well for membrane key matrix modifications.The pen I ordered here in Sept 2020 results in 24hr cured traces with very high resistance, which varies, some lines have no conductivity at all.Caig is a good company, and says this one Caig product is fery shelf life dependent. Caig does NOT have a production or use by date on the pens. If they did this QC issue could be avoided. They said they would send me a replacement, but I wanted to post a warning. All my modified membranes are now junk.I didn't use or test this pen until just 4 days past 1 month so Amazon's great return policy didn't apply.I will only buy these directly from Caig in the future.

I bought this for repairing the resistor grid on my rear defroster. There was about a 1mm gap that was scratched off ever since I had the car. The problem is, this stuff needs to "cure". After some tests in my lab at work, I suspect the polymer binder shrinks and pulls the silver particles closer together and thus becomes conductive.In order to make it cure, it has to get pretty warm which is not something easily possible on a car window without risking cracking the glass. Something like 50-60 degrees celsius is what it requires. At room temperature, it seems like it doesn't cure at all. I left it for several days on two copper traces about 2mm apart and it never cured until I held a candle underneath it. The resistance of this painted junction was megaohms until it got warm and then went down to approximately 4 to 8 ohms depending on how thick I made it. Still could be a useful product for some applications.

This product has been around for a long time, and in my view, it is the best product of its kind. It truly works well as advertised. But, I have always been put off by its price, so I have bought cheaper...and often regretted that decision. But, no matter how you call it, good, great, fantastic, fabulous and etc, it still remains way over-priced.