Normally, I rarely ever swear, and generally have a fairly dim view of people who swear routinely — my mother taught me very good manners (spoken in my best posh British accent), in that regard at least. But on occasion I do swear, and on such occasions, people who know me well typically sit up and take note because coming from me, it actually means something. Most often, it's simple stress relief, in which I take it to an extreme, like saying with great conviction, "F#<K THE MOTHERF#<KING F#<K F#<KER"… or something along those lines, it really does depend on the circumstances.
Now, I'm just getting back into messing with Electronics as a hobby after a 20 year sabbatical in paying-the-bills land, and I'm gearing up to run a version 2 of one of those simple little "make a blinking led in KiCad" tutorials, mostly just for practice, and since these cheap PCB makers like to send you at least a couple of anything you order, I figured it would also be a good opportunity to practice my soldering by making them all up. But then, what to do with 3 blinky LED boards...?
Well, send them to people, of course! A perfectly useless flashing SMT LED on a little awesomely purple circuit board, laid out by yours truly… what better a gift to give!
So now, this thread caught my eye... because for one particularly good friend of mine — who would be quite pleased that I've rekindled my interest in Electronics after so long — silk screening onto a version of the board just for them, a nice graphic penis accompanied with an assortment of not just one but several 4-letter words not typically spoken in civilised discourse, would absolutely make their day. Especially if said blinking LED happened to be positioned at an appropriately inappropriate spot in the graphic.
If only I knew the PCB manufacturer did not employ any of those terminally curmudgeonous employees that appear to assume that the application of fowl language and/or crude graphic art in a design necessarily relates solely and directly to the maturity of the designer, rather than instead, you know, considering the possibility — however slight — that said PCB designer might actually be aware for whom they are designing the board.
So… Dispensing for the time being with the discussion of the appropriateness or lack thereof of such things being present in a design, does anyone actually know whether the various PCB manufacturers are likely to care (or even notice), such things? I ask also, because of a netcast I was listening to just yesterday, featured someone high up the food chain of one of those PCB manufacturers, and the question came up regarding the potential privacy issues surrounding designs coming through, and it was noted that they really shouldn't be taking too much interest anyhow. I would assume they treat a PCB design much like a doctor treats your prostate; get in, make sure it's okay, get out, and move on to the next (and maybe laugh about it over dinner that night with the family — though hopefully not in the case of your doctor).
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