Circuit Board World Map
Tags: DIY, Maps

Introduction

This is a blog post about a hobby project I started five years ago in 2015. I wanted to create something in my free time when I was at my parents house. We had a couple of motherboards and graphics cards lying around from old computers and down that road it went. It took five years from start to finish, but I worked on this project very sporadically. It could go a couple of months in between the visits to my parents house.

The following sections will document my experiences and what I learned, and what I would do differently in future projects.

Construction

I wanna start out by thanking my father for all the help on the project. He gave a lot of insight into materials and just generally of things that exist in the world of building things. He was a supporter from the very start and the primary person to run thoughts and ideas by. Not to mention power-tools, workbenches and all that jazz.

There is definitely no blueprint for the project and I did not document the process along the way, but I will outline the major choices that was made in this section. The whole map consists of 3 panels, I will refer to them individually as ‘panel’ from now on.

The panel of the Americas

The 3 panels are 62x100 cm each. Initially I was quite averse to saw into my circuit boards which lead to the quite large panels, as I wanted the motherboards to fit. It was also hard and error prone to work with circuit boards before I found the right tools for the job. The width/height ratio is the golden ratio because ‘why not’.

MDF boards with unfinished cutouts

Unfinished MDF-boards side by side

The panels themselves are 6 mm MDF-board. Each panel has a front MDF-board and a back MDF-board. In my vision for the project there was no visible bolts or screws, this idea came early and made everything a bit harder. Looking back at it, a considerable amount of brain power went to thinking about how to hide all screws and other construction details. The back panel was the solution to the problem of hiding all the bolts. All circuit boards and the front board are mounted on the back board. I made a cross section diagram of the way thing are laid out:

Cross section example of the structure of the panels

The map of the world is cut out from the front boards, which are painted white. It is fastened to the back board with some larger bolts, which are covered up by a piece of bent sheet metal forming a frame. This is the big thing I did not craft myself, the bent sheet metal was cut and bent by a metal working contact of my dad. I didn’t initially envision a frame around the panels, but in the end I think it turned out alright.

The bolt-filled back of an almost finished panel

The panels are about ten major circuit boards each, with motherboards making up most of the area. There are mostly desktop motherboards but there are all kinds of circuit boards represented. There are graphics cards, a playstation circuit board, laptop motherboards and a lot of smaller junk like ram sticks, modem circuitry and there’s even a phone circuit board in Siberia.

The layout of the circuitry was quite a cumbersome affair. I avoided destroying the circuit boards if I could, but if I’d redo the project I would deform them more to my purposes. Layouting the circuit boards so that no nice looking parts were obscured was very challenging. Fastening and unfastening the boards also consumed a lot of time, but the panels can technically still be taken apart by unscrewing the bolts that hold everything together.

There is two overlapping layers of circuit boards. The back layer is 1 cm away from the back MDF-board and the front layer is about 2 cm further out from the back layer. The layers are distanced from each other by putting in lengths of rubber tube around the bolts. The circuit boards are going absolutely nowhere, it is all very rigid.

My appreciation goes out to all friends who donated circuitry! I did however scavenge most of it from thrash electronics. I also went around to some computer shops asking for broken motherboards. I still have a heap, and I still think that a circuit board look awesome, like a miniature industrial area with silos and weird factories.

I chose to do two layers for two reasons, one of which is, again, to keep the circuit boards intact. The other reason was that I did not want any seams (where one circuit board ended and the next one started) showing. I wanted the seams to be hidden to create the illusion of the circuits on each of the two levels to be one continuous piece. This is also why I did my best to color match the circuit boards into regions. The seams I did have to include I tried to make as small as possible as the ones I placed in Panama. But in the end I did have to have several quite large seams visible with no layer above obscuring them. I think the two layered approach cost far more than it was worth. The seams do not look bad at all in the finished product.

Front layer of Africa/Europe panel

As you probably saw in the cross section diagram, furthest back, against the back MDF-board are the lights. It was always the plan to have the circuits illuminated, one of the inciting events of the project was actually when I shone light through a graphics card and found it really pretty. It doesn’t translate that well to the images here, but I think the effect is stunning.

Illuminated circuits

Sadly the lightning part of the project came late in the process when passion was running low and the scope reducing agenda was at its most draconian. Therefore the plan of having an even distribution of light behind every circuit board was scrapped and I went with led strips placed at strategic positions. And yeah, I just wanted to finish the project, so the led strips I chose were not the right ones for the job, they were very bright which was good, but also bulky, and expensive.

Lighting setup

I also noticed that all circuit boards are not the same, who knew? The old ones I played around with initially did really beautifully illuminate their circuits when shone through. Many of the ones I scavenged for the project later did not have this property. Thicker and more opaque made the light that came through often be restricted to dots, and often uncolored. I had to fix some areas where the circuit boards did not color the light properly. I did this by cutting out colored plastic from colored folders and gluing to the back of the thicker motherboards. Laptop motherboards were very bad in this regard, none of the ones i acquired let through light properly.

Another problem that arose during the lighting stage was that the light bled across the panels. The light should pass through the circuit boards and not around them. I remedied this by painting the back board black and I bought some strips of sponge which could compress and slot nicely into the now quite finished structure of mdf and circuitry. That blocked out much of the light, good enough. As a human being, during this project, I went from having some streaks of excessive perfectionism to having the optimal amount.

And that’s about it, each panel weighs about 10 kg each. They have a power switch each hidden among the circuit boards. None of the boards are in any way connected to a power source.

Things I learned, and what I’d do differently

I’d like to share some thoughts and insights below.

Having my dad to discuss ideas with was very helpful for motivation and workflow. It was often obvious that I did not manage to translate my vision into his brain, but that just lead to more exploration of the available design space.

I definitely wish I had documented more and in a more structured way. I maintain a somewhat regular log at work, that would’ve gone a long way here. The reason I have not sprinkled in more detailed information in this blog post is that I do not remember. And taking apart the panels and actually look takes far too much work. I have no idea how much I spent on the project (some documentation along the way would have been nice). I do remember taking a chance and buying some quite expensive aluminum profiles, thinking that they maybe could be crafted into a frame. They couldn’t. It’s definitely easy to burn money on a project like this.

Getting things straight, aligning things and measuring things are also a lot harder than I expected. In computer programs aligning things is very very easy, in real life it is very easy to mess up, and it costs you. I think I got better at it towards the end, or at least more vigilant. I usually do software projects, so it was definitely fun to work on something ‘real’ with your hands.

The entire project was a chore in the end. That is no good, and I think you should work hard/smart to avoid that. In the early stages I did not question my vision and my decisions as much as I’d ought too. Many decisions was a bit too much based on faith and led to complicated unnecessary work. I did have an early prototype board which was good. I jokingly came up with the cheesy line ‘To score you gotta ScoRe’ halfways through the project, it stands for ‘To score you gotta scope reduce’. KYD (Kill your darlings) and scope reduction is important in personal projects, at least for me. You can probably overdo it, reduce too much and i’m sure it drains the passion you have to start with. The led light scope reduction I did was absolutely necessary, but, maybe I could have scope reduced other things earlier instead.

Have a nice day, and enjoy your projects while they last!