Your graffiti on circuit boards

[VK3DRB]

Over the years, I have designed many circuit boards and in almost every case I have left my three initials as part of the top or bottom "white ink" overlay or in a copper layer. They are generally 0.8mm or 1mm high characters, and left in a rather inconspicuous place, typically near the edge of a board. It is done on the quiet. These initials have ended up in products and industrial equipment around the world. I have never has problems doing this, including in peer reviews and customer acceptance tests.

Yes, it is graffiti - leaving your mark, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same providing the characters are small and in a relatively inconspicuous place. It is more a stamp of pride of workmanship and encourages personal accountability. In electronic engineering, I expect my peer engineers to be craftsmen who are proud of the quality of their design work.

Some might see leaving initials as being narcissistic or being reckless or unprofessional.

Does anyone else put their initials on their circuit boards? And why? What about other graffiti marks?

[nctnico]

I usually put my company logo in a copper layer if there is place. It depends a bit on the customer though. Some want their PCBs without any marking which can trace to an OEM.

[AndyC_772]

It's odd, isn't it? Compare and contrast with the music industry...

If you buy a CD, the branding that's all over the packaging is the name of the band and the album. The name of the band is what gets promoted, and to a slightly lesser extent, the names of the individuals who make up that band.

The publisher, on the other hand, is a mere footnote. Nobody really cares that much about the label.

An electronic device, however, is branded 100% with the manufacturer's name. The team that designed it remains completely anonymous and unknown, even though they're the ones responsible for what the product is able to do, and how well it works.

If you like a band that happens to be signed to one particular label, are you more likely to buy other albums from that band, or that label?

If you like a product that happens to bear one manufacturer's logo, are you more likely to buy other products that bear that label, or other products designed by the same individuals (wherever they happen to be currently working?)

As engineers, is it right, or good for us, that we remain anonymous?

[BradC]

An electronic device, however, is branded 100% with the manufacturer's name. The team that designed it remains completely anonymous and unknown, even though they're the ones responsible for what the product is able to do, and how well it works.

Bucking that trend is one of many things I loved about the original Macintosh.

[rollatorwieltje]

As engineers, is it right, or good for us, that we remain anonymous?

As a software engineer I make sure my name is nowhere to be found anywhere. Probably not really an issue for hardware guys, but once your name is in a piece of software and something doesn't work (...), people will try to contact you directly instead of using the proper channels.

[jolshefsky]

I used to place a "J" on an innocuous trace on the PCB somewhere. I got away from it recently (using KiCAD—no holy wars, please) but I keep meaning to do it again.

[German_EE]

Back in medieval times the stone masons used to leave their masons mark on each piece they worked on, that way the boss could work out how much they should be paid. This is just a modern version of the same idea.

The signatures inside the original Mac? Great idea 

[KJDS]

I prefer to do RF designs in the style of Slartibartfast

[Falcon69]

advantages and disadvantages to this.

Putting your mark on your product/circuit boards means that someone else can't take credit for your work....

On the other hand, by doing that, and your product blows something up, you can't say it wasn't yours and pawn it off onto someone else.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I put a bunch of what I called silkscreen squids on boards until someone told me they're octopus.
I'm no marine biologist.

[Smokey]

I usually put my initials on inner layer copper under an outer layer pour.  I know it's there, but without xraying or delaminating no one will ever see it.  It's kind of like micron size signing the die inside chips. 

I knew a layout guy that had a library part of his cursive initials so all the letters touched.  Then he made that part of an un-important trace somewhere so it was actually part of the signal path of something. 

[at2marty]

I've only done a few boards professionally, and on those I put my company's logo on the silk screen.

My personal "hobbyist" boards, I usually put my name, date and a version number on the silk screen.  This way I know that if I ever made a change, I know which schematic to go to should I have an issues.

While doing code, I always put my name in the comments section at the very top of the file as well as a date.  If I make any changes to a file, I do put my name, date and a brief description of the change right below that.  This way it is documented, and my hope is that if someone else modifies the code they will do the same.  I also maintain a "changelog" file in the source code that describes changes in a bit more detail that includes my name, date and a good description of what file changed and what was changed.

[G0HZU]

As engineers, is it right, or good for us, that we remain anonymous?

Sometimes it's very good that we remain anonymous and that includes the company name too...

Plenty of times I've been part of a design team where the whole team has to painstakingly make sure that NOTHING reveals who made the unit even if it is taken apart and reverse engineered.

So no logos or clues anywhere in code or hardware. It's harder to achieve in practice than you might think especially if you don't always work with these aims on all projects. So there can be a few D'oh! moments during design reviews!

[nctnico]

advantages and disadvantages to this.

Putting your mark on your product/circuit boards means that someone else can't take credit for your work....

On the other hand, by doing that, and your product blows something up, you can't say it wasn't yours and pawn it off onto someone else.

This reminds me: at one of my employers the rule was to use your initials for the PCB design identification number. There was no way to blame someone else for a shoddy layout!

[VK3DRB]

As engineers, is it right, or good for us, that we remain anonymous?

As a software engineer I make sure my name is nowhere to be found anywhere. Probably not really an issue for hardware guys, but once your name is in a piece of software and something doesn't work (...), people will try to contact you directly instead of using the proper channels.

You can embed your name into Flash or EEPROM. That way it remains anonymous and benign and no-one will ever see it, unless some hacker stumbles across it. But at least you have left your mark.

[KJDS]

As engineers, is it right, or good for us, that we remain anonymous?

Sometimes it's very good that we remain anonymous and that includes the company name too...

Plenty of times I've been part of a design team where the whole team has to painstakingly make sure that NOTHING reveals who made the unit even if it is taken apart and reverse engineered.

So no logos or clues anywhere in code or hardware. It's harder to achieve in practice than you might think especially if you don't always work with these aims on all projects. So there can be a few D'oh! moments during design reviews!

Even worked on units with miles of pink wiring to make it harder to reverse engineer? One unit I worked on had about 500 separate interconnect wires, all hand soldered into a wiring loom, every one of which was pink. I hated doing anything with that.

[DmitryL]

Even worked on units with miles of pink wiring to make it harder to reverse engineer? One unit I worked on had about 500 separate interconnect wires, all hand soldered into a wiring loom, every one of which was pink. I hated doing anything with that.

Pink, you say... wire looms.. Hmm.. Have you been reverse-engineering Russian-made military equipment, by chance ? Pink teflon-insulated wire (MGTF) was very common in that sort of things