Conversation

Charlotte 🦝 therian

Why does everything come on black PCBs now
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@charlotte Has dark mode fans gone too far??
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@erk not getting my keyboard made in purple was a mistake
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@charlotte I've been wondering why green has been such a dominant color in PCBs, but I feel like people choose colors other than green whenever they want it to look "special" or "premium" or something

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@freja aiui it was green because it made inspection easier, and later because it was just so much cheaper to continue making green PCBs than it was to invest into another UV printing station

Of course eventually order sizes became large enough to justify that investment so red and blue PCBs came to be. Nowadays x-ray is used for inspection so lower contrast colors like black and purple also work
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@charlotte @freja I heard that green and white was chosen because it was most visible in colored lighting (mostly red for night/emergency)

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@miifox

@freja that's because it's a single sided pcb, check the back
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@charlotte @freja yes i know the back is going to be green, but I mean I have never seen this colour outside of single-sided boards
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@miifox
@freja that is because it's the bare FR4 fiberglass
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@charlotte @freja the point was:
- premium: special colours
- new standard: black
- old standard: green
- very cheap: the brownish bare fiberglass of a single-sided board
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@miifox

@freja bare fiberglass is fine. If you don't need more than 1 layer, why spend money adding a useless solder mask?
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