Trace Board

A flat ceramic with traces on it, the raw stuff of a circuit. The Component Tester reads it, and mounting parts on it makes a Basic Electronic Circuit, which reads how well it was made.

Making one

1. Substrate: grind a brick (or any ceramic brick) flat on a Grinding Wheel. Insulation and how hot it can get come from the ceramic itself.
2. Lay traces, in a crafting grid, one of two ways:
3. Etched: a substrate and two fine wires of one metal (from the Wire Drawer). Fine, and it can carry power. There is no acid in the game yet, so the etching is the crafting.
4. Printed: a substrate and a dust that sets as a trace (redstone dust). Cheap, but lossy and for signals only, and the paste scorches at a lower heat than a wire.
5. Mount parts (optional): board plus one part in the grid, before pasting. See Basic Electronic Circuit.
6. Paste: a board and a solder ingot in the grid. The solder is spent now whatever happens later.

Soldering it

Heat the pasted board past the solder's melting point, hold it there a moment, and no hotter than the alloy likes. Two ways: the Soldering Iron by hand, or the Reflow Oven in batches. See Solder for what a good joint takes.

A board with parts on it comes out as a circuit. A joint comes out unsoldered, cold (intermittent) or good. If the traces get too hot they lift: you get the bare substrate back and lose the wire and the solder. A cold joint is not wasted: run it again.