Tutorial from feministhackerspaces on fabricating printed circuit boards using wild (natural) clay as the substrate material.
Key Takeaways
Uses wild clay, not conventional FR4 or synthetic substrate, as the base for PCB fabrication.
Positioned as an open-access, materials-first approach to hardware making outside industrial supply chains.
The “open secret” framing in the preview suggests the tutorial draws on knowledge not widely documented in mainstream maker resources.
Comes from feministhackerspaces, a network oriented toward low-barrier, community-controlled hardware practice.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters immediately placed this in context of industrial ceramics: ceramic capacitors, resistors, inductors, and thick-film ceramic PCBs are already standard, with commercial manufacturers producing them at scale.
The gap between DIY wild-clay fabrication and industrial ceramic PCBs (which require controlled firing and thick-film deposition) is left unaddressed in the thread.
“Truly stonepunk” is the sharpest reaction: the framing captures why this resonates as craft provocation rather than a production-ready technique.
Notable Comments
@amelius: links to a thick-film ceramic PCB manufacturer, grounding the wild-clay approach against an existing industrial ceramic electronics supply chain.
