Hello friends, I'll give my suggestion for making insulating substrates for PCBs.
Imagine grinding pistachio shells and then pressing them into PCB shapes using appropriate glue. It might work, and the solution could also contribute to clean energy. Angelo Em ter., 25 de nov. de 2025 às 09:47, oliver munz <[email protected]> escreveu: > What do you think makes manufacturing more environmentally friendly? Fewer > copper layers? Less copper etching? Less material, meaning smaller and > thinner PCBs? Or is it also about the manufacturing process itself? For > example, how many holes, how much milling path, and whether or not there's > any component placement pressure? > > Would glass be better than fiberglass epoxy? > > What exactly is this about? > On Tuesday, November 25, 2025 at 12:15:34 PM UTC+1 Vincent Grennerat wrote: > >> I have been continuously using KiCad since 2005 (I am a former colleague >> of JP Charras), and I am now focusing my research on increasing the >> sustainability of electronics, especially at the PCB level. In this context >> I am member of the DESIRE4EU research project (https://desire4eu-eic.eu) >> which has the aim to bring to industry new innovative low-impact substrates >> for PCB, compatible with current subtractive manufacturing technologies. >> With Arduino onboard, we are currently designing (on KiCad of course!) the >> next IoT Arduino board, through an eco-design approach. >> >> Part of my work consists of exploring new PCB design rules that would >> significantly contribute to reduce the ecological footprint of PCBs >> (typically 5 to 25% of an assembled electronic board), at the manufacturing >> step and at end-of-life. I now think that CAD softwares could include sone >> kind of eco-design tool to help the designers in evaluating and reducing >> the ecological footprint of their design. The tool could be part of the >> KiCad toolbox, inside the PCB Calculator application. Among other things, >> it would probably rely on life cycle assessment macro-results (a small >> database), upstream produced by some LCA software. >> >> I cannot be a software contributor to KiCad, but if some developers show >> interest in this potential new tool, I could contribute to provide the >> inputs and the design of the tool. I suppose that this "eco-design rules" >> concept can seem rather vague for a lot of people, and I'd be delighted to >> develop our research results on copper circularity, and how we can rethink >> our way of laying out copper on the PCB layers. >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "KiCad Developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion visit > https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/db9d451f-a926-4e47-a85e-136544571ec5n%40kicad.org > <https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/db9d451f-a926-4e47-a85e-136544571ec5n%40kicad.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- José Angelo Amado +55 (61) 9 9531 9090 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "KiCad Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/kicad.org/d/msgid/devlist/CAKEMbCx7-bhzNV%3DvshandEdYb7RGi_Q02XPiwxiJLHn3A03j2Q%40mail.gmail.com.
