Hey guys, got myself couple of questions to ask about PCBs and case design issues i'm stuck at.
1. What kind of lacquer to use for that "retail" green (or other color) finish?
2. How to make pretty high quality silk screens?
1. It's very hard to get a high quality (and actually functional) solder mask finish when doing DIY. You can buy UV cure ink/paint (actually more a type of epoxy I believe, but anyway) which you can expose with pad artwork then wipe clean the unexposed pads - but it's tricky to work with, at least to get a high quality result. And you can also get dry film UV sensitive soldermask which is probably easier to work with but harder to find, I think it's thicker than the more common negative active dry film resist but usage in the same manner. If you are not so worried about the actual solder masking ability, I've heard of people using various lacquer spray paints to lightly coat the board, and then they just solder right through it (burn away by the iron tip).
2. High quality silk screens, only one way reallly, an actual silk screen. You could do toner transfer like you would for etch resisting, but since you're really limited to black toner, especially if it's over the top of a soldermask you're going to have to use a light coloured soldermask (you can get white ink, but I think the dry film comes in any colour as long as it's green). I tried using the same soldermask UV cure ink in a different colour as "silkscreen" by exposing to an appropriate artwork, results were sub optimal, but perhaps more practice would have got a process that works (I may try again sometime).