'Tech Tats' Use Conductive Ink to Put a Circuit on Your Skin

originally posted by: hounddoghowlie
a reply to: SBargisen

it's amps not volts that stop a heart. it only takes 100mA to stop your heart.
a example tasers put out 50,000 volts at 1.9 mA (0.0019 A) to 2.1 mA (or 0.0021 A), depending upon how it is measured.

Given that your skin impedance is fairly high, if you want current, you have to supply voltage. Current is a dependent variable to voltage. A few Volts won't get the job done.

a reply to: Bedlam

silly me forgetting ohms law.

that being said if the supply can maintain the current, and the conductive tattoo ink is embed in the skin down to Dermis where the blood capillaries, nerve endings, sweat glands, hair follicles, are, and is a wet layer, not on top where it is dry and constantly shedding and regrowing that's why tattoos are below the Epidermis if they weren't the tattoo would bleedout or more correctly shed out. being in the Dermis which in turn will lower the resistance lower voltage will work just fine.

in other words if the Dermis has a resistance of say 500 to 1000 ohms and not 1000 to 600,000. low voltage at lower feq (hz) will kill you if the current can be maintained.

here is a good source to read.
The Fatal Current

ETA: during my days as a industrial /commercial electrical repair tech and shop owner, i have been in schools were we were shown how voltage as low as 30 volts could kill given the right circumstances.

here is another, read the whole thing.
How much voltage is “dangerous”?

a reply to: hounddoghowlie

Even at 500 ohms, and you won't see anything that low with this, you'd still need 50v to drive 100mA.

eta: and that's assuming your source impedance is negligable. Which won't be the case with a tiny glue-on battery.

a reply to: SBargisen

Actually voltage has nothing to do with it. That would be amperage. You could kill someone with a watch battery if you understood how to send the amps directly to the heart.

originally posted by: Zerodoublehero
a reply to: SBargisen

Actually voltage has nothing to do with it. That would be amperage. You could kill someone with a watch battery if you understood how to send the amps directly to the heart.

Not at all. You don't get to specify current by itself. For any given impedance, the voltage causes the current. You can't just magically cause current flow with insufficient voltage.

Also, for most biological processes, it's a function of total energy. The energy in a watch battery is insufficient to do the job.

all i care about is whether or not this will take up valuable skin real estate - i only have so much skin and all of it is staked out and portioned up for my future ~real~ tattoos already.

originally posted by: reldra
a reply to: lostbook

Tech wearables are already here , as in clothing and watch accessories. The tech tattoo is already here. I would like something less invasive like this ink.

I agree, and to me the temporary solution makes more sense. Think of how unpleasant it would be to upgrade a tattoo! We redesign circuits and logic elements all the time, and connectors that worked on the PC 20 years ago don't work now. Human lifespans are upwards of 100 years. It doesn't make complete sense to have a static tech.

a reply to: Bedlam

Voltage is the means of how the amperage is carried and thus done properly can be done is a way to send the amps that is required to stop the human heart which isn't much. You just have to know how to do it.

originally posted by: Zerodoublehero
a reply to: Bedlam

Voltage is the means of how the amperage is carried and thus done properly can be done is a way to send the amps that is required to stop the human heart which isn't much. You just have to know how to do it.

I = E/R. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.

If your R is fixed, E determines I. You don't get to have a 1K resistance and half a Volt, and make I whatever you'd like. It's really quite simple.

Also, what's the total energy in a small watch battery? There you go.

I believe it but I wouldn't want one of these sort of tattoos. It's been long in the making and it doesn't surprise me. Someday though it might be customary for a newborn child to get a special tattoo or implant that would "link" them in with society and be an identifier.

good for t h e tinkering but someone else bodies not mine. think we get hyperlinks better minds better contortions sex positions later okay with tinkering now.