Show HN: How to make full colour PCB art
pixel.curious.suppliesA blog post about how we got beautiful full-colour art UV-inkjet printed on PCBs for a crazy project. It describes pitfalls and how to get it right!
Looks great, ordered one. Thanks for the write-up!
Thanks so much for your support! I hope you enjoy it a lot.
Cautionary notes on PCB artwork from a PCB assembly expert:
I'd like to see a dev board (Arduino, RPi, micro:bit) with V+ lines all silkscreened in red, ground in black, and serial in blue & green. It would make teaching much easier.
It wouldn't even be too hard to design, I just never saw it before.
It's not exactly the same thing, but there's an app that does AR overlays of PCBAs [1] to help with debug. I haven't used it, but it's a pretty neat idea.
Wow! I wonder if I could get that to work with a MacBook BRD and USB microscope. It really is a nice use of AR.
How does it differ from: https://www.littlebird.com.au/blogs/news/colourful-printed-c.... ?
love the workaround of using soldermask for white. do you have any ideas for how you might mitigate red fade on future designs?
Thanks! I think next we'll try to naively increase the levels of red before printing, and see if that helps enough. If it doesn't, maybe it's time to look into alternative red inks that don't fade from heat as much.
This looks fantastic, well done!
I don’t want to diminish your drive and accomplishment, but I can’t help but see the connection between this, and the microplastic world we live in. Creating disposable objects, and then covering them in plastic, seems like a net-loss for the planet.