Electronics question

[Dan22]

Thanks for your help in advance. I purchased a pitching target for my boy (for baseball) that has seperate zones for strikes and balls. When the ball hits one of the zones the electonic system calls out whether it's a ball or a strike. I opened up the canvas target and see a thin piece of foam (with many 1/2" holes in it) sandwiched by 2 pieces of thin clear plastic. Both of the clear plastic sheets have thick black lines in the areas of the different zones which detect when the ball hits the zone by making contact with eachother. My question is what are these black lines on the clear plastic which carry the electric current called.

Thanks again!

 

[Raven Luni]

You can call them anything you like - lines, conductors, conductive paths, contacts (at least in the places where they make contact), tracks, traces, circles (I assume they are round?).

Is the unit broken? (I assume you wouldnt mess around with your sons toys without a reason).

But I'll venture an answer on teh chance that it is broken and the problem is with the conducting lines you mentioned. If those are broken you can replace them easily with anything that is conductive and flexible. For thin film traces like that the best method is to use conductive paint (just google for that). As long as the circuit is complete again before the point it leaves the target and is sent to the processor it should be good as new