EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff => Topic started by: kasbah on November 20, 2016, 07:35:35 pm
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I am making a weird looking PCB as promotional item and just got the first boards back. It's a light following bristle bot inspired by this one by Facelesstech (https://facelesstech.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/light-following-bristle-bot/).
I don't know if my version works yet but before even assembling it I realised I shouldn't have made the back completely black. It seems wrong when you hold it in your hands as the edges on the front are without resist. I want to make it bare board (so the light can shine through) and make everything currently on the back in white silkscreen in black instead. The last picture is a rendering close to what I would like to do.
1. Can I use the black solder resist to make detailed graphics on the back like I have on the silkscreen or do I need to use black silkscreen?
2. If I need to use silkscreen, can I even put silkscreen on bare board without resist?
The design is Creative Commons (CC-BY), made with Inkscape, svg2mod (https://github.com/mtl/svg2mod) and KiCAD and available on GitHub (https://github.com/kitnic-forks/jelly).
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Several PCB manufacturers offer black silkscreen (on either side of the board). As long as you do not intend to solder the boards in a machine, you'll be fine without a soldermask.
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Thanks, but if I use the resist layer to try and draw the things that are currently on the silkscreen layer it won't turn out so well, no? The reason would be to have white on the front and black on the back without adding cost for doing a special order.
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2. If I need to use silkscreen, can I even put silkscreen on bare board without resist?
No, if it won't be rejected, fab will just remove it.
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Thanks, but if I use the resist layer to try and draw the things that are currently on the silkscreen layer it won't turn out so well, no? The reason would be to have white on the front and black on the back without adding cost for doing a special order.
It will be fine, but you need to be sure that solder resist is according to fab design rules. if it is too narrow, those areas will be either removed by the fab or if they don't remove it, some narrow areas still might be randomly missing.
Some PCB art:
(http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire3/f4340a3e6d071bf77078300df85db1891334697157_full.jpg)
(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/188t85cjinmopjpg.jpg)
(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/188t856mjr0k1jpg.jpg)