New flex circuits?

[sqoon]

Is there possibility that someone could easily make flex circuit prepros for controllers like Intellivision, Colecovision, and 5200?

 

Basically, it is a screen printing process, but how expensive and difficult would it be?

[mimo]

best electronics have been making/selling 5200 ones for years

[sqoon]

Yes, I know about the Best Electronics flex circuits. I am mainly interested in refurbing Intellivision and Colecovision controllers, and cannot find any new ones. Once in a while an Intellivision mylar circuit pops up on ebay, but I question the newness because nobody has made those in decades.

[ubersaurus]

I would personally be all for new ones; those old plastic ones are getting pretty old and I'd hate to have a time come where it's extremely costly to get new ones that work. I'm already kind of afraid to crack open my Intellivision controller to clean the fire buttons because I don't want to break mine.

[jmetal88]

I made my own flex circuit once. You can actually get flex PCB material that you can etch like a normal circuit board. Unfortunately, it took me a while to get it right, so I used up all the sample material I received from whichever company it was I contacted (forgot the name by now) making two little 1.5-inch by 3-inch circuits.

[Richard H.]

http://www.pcbfx.com/main_site/pages/products/flex_pc_board.html

[jmetal88]

http://www.pcbfx.com...x_pc_board.html

 

That's interesting, although it's not the company I got my samples from. I managed to get my samples for free, and they actually were polyimide rather than fiberglass.

 

Actually, doing a quick Google search leads me to believe that the company I got my samples from was DuPont. I don't specifically remember it being DuPont, but the brand name Pyralux sounds very, very familiar. Of course it might not be as easy for some people to get samples; I think the main reason they sent some to me is because I identified myself as a university student and gave them my school e-mail address.

[shadow460]

I would personally be all for new ones; those old plastic ones are getting pretty old and I'd hate to have a time come where it's extremely costly to get new ones that work. I'm already kind of afraid to crack open my Intellivision controller to clean the fire buttons because I don't want to break mine.

It's not too hard to work on those controllers, but you should know that there's a flex circuit lasagna in there. There are two or three layers at least and you have to line them up just right in order to get the controller back together. The flex circuits seems to be able to withstand some abuse as well, so they're not going to break just by having the controller opened up.