Details
Supplier: Revolve by Cutouts
What are Printed Circuit Boards?
In today's global village of instant communication and on-demand services, electronic equipment is cheaper and more widely available than ever before. Much of this equipment is designed to be of a throw away nature instead of being repairable.
Every piece of electronic equipment needs some type of printed circuit board (or PCB) in order to work, as it is the base from which the product is built. Consumer electronic products are constantly being updated and redesigned due to innovation and competition and, although these products are becoming smaller in size as time goes by, their numbers continue to increase.*
Where do we get our circuit boards from?
Most PCBs are produced in large volumes by electronics manufacturers and ultimately become either obsolete or fail stringent control checks, after which they are incinerated or dumped into landfill sites. It is these circuit boards that Revolve rescue and use to make our unique giftware and stationery products. All of the PCBs used would have otherwise been UK waste*
What do they look like?
The recycled PCBs have a flat finish and have never had components attached to them with any type of solder or glue. Consequently, the heavy metals associated with electronic equipment are not present. Around 95% of the PCBs are green in colour, but occasionally we get gold, red and (most rarely), blue. Some boards are single sided with a brown back and green front and others are green both sides.*
What do we do to them?
Each of the recycled PCBs is cut into shapes by our fantastic shape cutting machine, and is always hand finished to create the final product. This is to ensure no sharp edges are left. The boards can generally be cut into any 2 dimensional shape, the only thing to limit us is our imagination!*
* This information has been sourced from Revolve by Cutouts website
Cutouts(no date) Materials - circuit boards [Online] Available:
http://www.revolve-uk.com/materials/materials_index.htm (Accessed 04.08.2008)