MG Chemicals 838AR-55ML Total Ground Carbon Conductive Coating, 55 mL Bottle

One day, I go to turn on my Novation Circuit and it's freaking out! She was making her own chaotic dubstep madness without my permission! That said, dubstep is not where I am at in life right now!!! I was saddened by this and my feeling was hurt. I looked for similar instances of possessed Novation Circuits online and found that I was not alone in my pain. There was only one thing to do... take it apart! Pulling the sulicone(rubber) pad off the bottom was a pain but not impossible. I peeled the pad back carefully as to not stretch it or tear it. Screws ahoy the rest of the teardown was simple. When I got inside the box it was pretty filthy. Dust is said to be the culprit in this specific malfunction and jeezus holy merry was it a grandmother's old jewelry box stuffed in the back of the closet, inside the Circuit box! Surprisingly there was no dust between the plastic contact layer and the copper touch circuits. All I had at the time of autopsy was acetone so I cleaned the copper contacts and then started wiping down the plastic contact sheet with the printed black conductive paint. DONT USE ACETONE ON THIS STEP!!! Stupid me, I started wiping off the black conductive paint almost immediately! I repeat... DONT USE ACETONE TO CLEAN ELECTRIC CONTACT PAINT!!! I was further saddened and my feeling was nearly crushed at this point! Did I give up hope and call my fun little beat box a wash? HELL NO!!! This just meant I got a little work to get done! The internet was hopeless on information on fixing pressure pad contacts for synths. I had to get creative! So I took to Amazon for assistance of course!!! Searching for electric contact paint led me to this product. As I use MG Chemicals for other DIY electronic projects I knew I could put my faith in their products and potentially bring my Novation Circuit back to a jam worthy state. It wasn't cheap for a can of paint but it was up the bizniss of what I thought I needed to do the thing I gotta do. After receiving the can a few days after hitting purchase, it took weeks too fester the bullocks to get on it... I did today... I did a test spray to compare resistance between the factory paint and the MG Chemicals paint. The MG was nearly if not more than double the resistance between distances but this was all I got and by golly gee whiz I was gonna do it anyways!!! Plus if it didn't work I still have a whole can of acetone by my side! So I cleared the rest of the factory contact paint with intention this time using acetone to give me a clean slate. Carefully masking off the area around the square pockets I prepped for spray pretty darn well and was proud of my work. I sprayed 2 good coats and a light finish coat pretty evenly. Not having a "clean room" sucks because dust loves fresh spray paint... all was not lost tho! Zona (another great item on Amazon) makes really fine sanding cloth. After a sufficient dry time(10-15 minutes(I have no patience for drying paint)) I started with 1200 grit and sanded the 3 particles of dust right down smooth and it hopefully evened out the pads to an even whatever... 2000 grit felt like a good grit to stop at as that's where my patience gave in and satisfaction settled. I then peeled back my masking job only for my pride to get bent a little too now. I reached again for ol' trusty acetone and made the best of what I could with the overspray that went under my proud masking job. It was sufficient enough at some point and the advice of an old Asian gentleman I once knew came into my head and said, "No Touchy Too Muchy!" Again with a settled satisfaction I moved on... I vacuumed everything twice and assembled the Circuit slowly and carefully knowing that this is when it usually goes wrong. Once again I dreamed of a dust free filtered clean room but who the hell has one of those in their shop!?! You just gotta do the best you can sometimes! Everything reassembled nicely and I even used a double stick tape to re-adhere the silicone bottomous. The time for redemption had come... my feeling was no longer hurt but was now anxious. I found a fitting plug and nodded to the powers that be... BEHOLD!!! She powered up better than before! At least I feel she did! Little Circuit's demon was exorcised! Her days of dubstep were long gone and her beats started making sense! She was off the Crack and back playing a groovy house beat like the good ol' days! Thank you MG Chemicals!!! You really did a service today saving the life of a groovy little beat box! ...not the best beat box I own but now I have a really deep personal and intimate relationship with the little Circuit and will always carry with me the fond memory of the day I saved my Novation Circuit thanks to MG Chemicals and their availability of some pretty unique products! Needless to say the sadness I had dulled long before I began working on this which really helped. I was not in a rush and the anxiety of losing my Circuit diminished. This became a case of learning from mistakes and bringing a new tool into my potential repertoire. I am happy all has worked out thus far and I can carry forth into my days knowing 1, when and where to use acetone B, MG Chemicals has my back and 3, It's not impossible... there is always a way! As for my feeling... rest be assured, it is safe as it should be...

I am heavily into DIY electronic projects, most of which involve high gain, high impedance amplifier circuits that will buzz just by having a 1" section of input lead exposed. SO, I really need shielding, like really really. I designed a small array of universal boxes for breadboards and my various projects, and I 3d print them as needed, using mainly ESun ABS+ but also the occasional straight ABS or PETG. This stuff sticks fine to all of my plastics, and the little 150ml can goes a surprisingly long way. One thing - I noticed halfway through the can that the bottom had a deep sludge in it, about 1/2" to 3/4" thick, that was coagulated material. Reading another review here, I saw that he had used acetone as a thinner, and I decided to go for it and add some to try to stretch the can out by getting that sludge back into service. It worked *perfectly*. Pleased with the results but thinking I could benefit from making the paint even more thin, I added more acetone until the paint was very water-like, but still strongly silvery. I *really* like it like this. It flows beautifully and it's much easier to coat a surface before it's sludging up from drying, and it still dries super fast because, of course, acetone. If a spot looks too thin, like I can make out the underlying material, I just dip the tip of my brush in and swipe the area. Before I thinned it like this, my work would come out looking smeary, a bit like stucco. Now it looks much more pro, much more even and smooth. Clipping a meter (BK Precision 2405A) lead to one side of the last project box I did (for small breadboards, box is about 6"L x 3"W x 2"H) and probing around with the other lead, I get an almost perfectly consistent 4.8 ohms, and that's with a single coat all the way around the inside. I can't say enough about this stuff. I used to get the aerosol spray version but had lots of problems with it clogging up on me. Got a can of this thinking I might hate it, but oh **** no. I love it, and I'll never go back. Properly thinned, it's a dream to use, wastes next to nothing but a single brush and maybe one spilled drop, and it isn't flying around in the air. I can do a dozen boxes (and lids for them) easily on one can. Yes, its expensive, but it works GREAT, even for superhigh gain, superhigh impedance circuits like my LMC6081 op-amp projects. Truly wonderful stuff and if they ever stop making it, I'll be really lost. Thanks MG Chemicals! :-) Rick NR417

The manufacturer is sly about what it is and doesn't give much documentation on application and usage. It took a lot of research to find that you need acetone for clean up even. You could probably make some sheilding paint up as good or better, but in the time it took the high expense of this paint won out again my overall available time. It works for radio frequency sheilding in guitar cavities. It sticks well and cures quickly. there is a little bit more than necessary to do all the cavities front and back , including tremolo recess on a stratocaster with S S S routes including output jack cavity. Probably enough for multiple guitars with less area to cover. In so much as the other intended uses like painting pcb boards and what not, I couldn't say. My only experience is using it as RF sheilding for guitar switch, jack, pickup and tremolo cavities. For that it did the job.

I've been using this as a base to plate copper on 3D Printed (LCD) parts and it has worked pretty well so far. Low resistance, which is where it beats out graphite, keeps the part from heating up and minimizes power loss. It's really going to depend on what you're coating though. I'm doing smaller parts so the cost/unit isn't bad despite the higher price tag here. This company has some other options that should work for airbrushing with a lower per-unit cost and I'll try those next. But for quick testing while setting up a new plating bath..this has been great. I haven't had enough time for long-term testing but haven't seen any adhesion issues yet on resin printed parts. I don't clean the parts but I do make sure to only handle them with gloves once they're cured and usually begin putting paint on within an hour or two of curing, so there's not much time for them to get too dirty after the alcohol soak then cure. I usually do 2 standard coats 5-10 minutes apart, then a final light coat to "fill in the gaps" (no clue if it helps but it makes me feel better), let it sit for 24 hours, then plate. You can heat cure it to speed up the curetime, I've just avoided it for fear I'd warp my plastic. NOTE: Use this somewhere you can spray and leave, because the fumes are wild. The smell makes it through my 3M Respirator the second I walk back into the shop.

I bought to copper plate 3D printed parts, and it simply does not work, I have tried multiple times in vastly different approaches all with the same result, only small spots of copper will be plated and the adhesion is only slightly better than using nothing at all. Enormous disappointment. I was able to plate aluminum with it, it worked so well I thought I had finally found the ideal conditions to make it work, tried PLA again, and the results were even worse than before. Don't bother with it if your going to electroplate 3D prints, it's a waste of money and worse, a gigantic waste of time and effort. Even using graphite lubricant for locks mixed with nail polish remover worked substantially better. Going to try actual graphite powder this was sadly a total bust.

Almost 10 years ago I bought an aerosol can of the same 841AR. Over that time I sprayed 5 Stratocasters which have big pickup and control cavities. I thought the can had plenty of paint left but one day I took it out and it had failed. There was a huge solidified clog of bubbly paint at the nozzle, sort of like when a battery dies and leaks chemicals. Worried about losing expensive product again, I bought this liquid can and planned to try hand painting it and spraying with Preval on a pair of guitars. I thought it a little odd that the 150mL can is more expensive than the aerosol listed as 326mL, but figured it was the can having propellant. First off the can was definitely new when it arrived but at best 60% full and that's being generous. I did one guitar with long wire channels brushing it on. With vigorous stirring it became very thin, but immediately began settling into sludge again while working. This leads to a lot of waste with too much on the brush and stirring stick having to be continuously cleaned in thinner. After 2 coats with 30 minutes dry time between, I ended up achieving a good shield measuring less than 20 Ohms resistance across two extreme ends of a cavity, and less than 5 across shorter distances . But it looks amateur, very uneven. Wanting the more professional look of spray, I looked into mixing it for the Preval. Per its data sheet MG's Thinner is 75% common Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA), so I decided to try thinning 1:1 with household 91% IPA. This worked fine in a few tests. I came back a few days later to mix a bigger batch. It was much harder to stir into a usable liquid, as if thinner was evaporating in the can. I added more alcohol, and eventually got a couple of coats spray with Preval. There's 3 issues with spraying. One, it’s a lot of prep to carefully mask off what you won't want to spray. Two, its very hard to spray side walls of narrow wire channels and 1-1/2" dep cavities like a Strat output jack. Three, spraying these at an angle there's a ton of overspray and waste. After doing two guitars, I'm down to maybe 3 couple ounces of 1:1 mix with IPA and mostly sludge in the can. For over $80 this really didn't go very far. Overall it gets the job done effectively but it's tedious on guitars with a lot of angles to paint. I'll probably buy the aerosol can again when this runs out.

I'm an electrical engineer who has tried many different conductive coatings... none have lived up to my expectations until now... This MG Chemicals conductive paint works Wonderfully as a conductive shield... I used it to make an RF shield in the cavities of my wood electric guitar body. You can see in the attached video that it works really well -- 2.5 Ohms over a relatively long distance as measured on my Fluke multimeter. I put a good coat of spray primer on the wood, then lightly sanded it to get the surface smooth before painting on a thick coat of the MG Chemicals conductive paint. After about an hour (in 85F), I tested the coating and got the results in the video.

Went with the 150mL tin after reading others' reviews saying the little bottle wasn't enough, and glad I did. Shielded a Les Paul LPM with two or three thick-ish coats, allowing about a day between each to cure. End result was a silent instrument (unless, of course, I plucked a string!) A quick guide: 1) Wear gloves and use disposable, organic-bristled brushes (I used horsehair "acid" brushes). The solvent is acetone and (I think) MEK, which is quite toxic and would likely mess up synthetic bristles during the middle of a coat. Once dry, this paint is impossible to remove from bristles - I tried everything I had on hand and nothing worked well. Put down paper or cardboard to protect against drips. Use it outside, or in a garage with the big door open: the fumes are strong. 2) Stir it thoroughly - this isn't normal paint. While applying it, it goes from runny to gummy much faster than most other coatings I've used, so plan your approach carefully. Dries to the touch in ~30min, but cure time is much longer (more on this later). 3) To ensure electrical continuity from chamber to chamber, you have to paint inside the wiring holes. What I did: take an old high E or B string, and fold and kink it (like a bobby pin). Push the string all the way through the hole into the next area, then push a bit of rag into the loop. Put a generous amount of paint on the piece of rag, then pull the string back through (much like cleaning a gun barrel). You only get one pass per coat, but I did two coats, and it worked fine. Note: a simple ohmmeter with a tone generator is handy to have as well, to check your progress. 4) To ensure you make contact with the jack plate and access panels/pickguard/etc, you actually have to go up onto the outside a teensy bit. I went from the edge out to touching each and every screw hole, but no further since I didn't want it to be seen once all the guts were reinstalled. The panels got a layer of copper foil tape with conductive adhesive, and once they were screwed on, there was electrical continuity with the rest of the guitar. 5) Let it cure, away from people or animals, for about a week before reinstalling everything. Though it "dries" quickly, its cure time is much, much longer, and it will emit the same acrid odor for days. I made the mistake of putting everything back together once a few hours had passed since a cold front was moving in, and it wasn't until a week or so had gone by before the smell went away (made focusing on playing difficult). All that said, I wouldn't hesitate to use it again, and have enough left over from this can to do 2-3 more guitars. Highly recommend.

Probably works beautifully as a shielding spray, but doesn't work at all for electroplating-the lacquer floats on top of the silver leaving a non-conductive surface...

Excellent conductive coating for electroplating projects I bought this for adding a conductive layer to resin 3D prints before electroplating, and it has worked perfectly. The coating applies smoothly, covers well and creates a reliable conductive surface once properly dry. I found that a couple of thin, even coats worked better than trying to slap one heavy coat on and hoping for the best—usually a sound rule for paint and life in general. It adheres well to prepared surfaces, dries to a consistent finish and has given me good results during plating. The conductivity has been dependable, including across smaller details and awkward shapes. It is not the cheapest coating, but it performs exactly as expected and saves a lot of frustration. A very useful product for electroforming, electroplating, model making and other conductive craft projects.

Its good

Product is good, but the price doubled in a month! Seems very opportunistic

I used Tamiya masking tape on a rear screen, out of the car, to form 1.5mm wide channels and filled these with this product up to the copper tracks that still showed voltage and ensured a good 1cm overlap. The fumes were overwhelming, a respirator was no use and in a large open workshop, fully ventilated with a fan blowing across the work area, the fumes were unbearable, triggering an asthma attack and streaming eyes, the fumes hit anyone who walked through the building like a hammer and could be smelt two units away. I left the first two tracks to cure overnight and next day they showed no continuity across and carried no voltage whatsoever; basically lethal and utterly useless.