
Show HN: PCBs with Full-Color Graphics - schappim
https://www.littlebird.com.au/blogs/news/colourful-printed-circuit-boards
======
wanderingjew
So this is something I've been involved with for the past few years. This is
_not_ the first PCB with full-color graphics. A company out of Shenzhen called
Makernet was doing something similar to this, and produced some interesting
boards for me [1] and Maker Faires in China.

Additionally, others have gotten very, very good at putting alternative
coatings on PCB. You can do remarkable work with spray paint and a vinyl
stencil. Others have done multiple colors of soldermask on the same board. You
can get very good results with black and white silkscreen, and using the
standard complement of soldermask colors, something any board house can do
very easily.

The problem with _all_ of these solutions is that these coatings do not work
in a reflow oven. The issue with UV printing is that you can not put it
through a reflow oven. This is important, because you do not want to put the
coating/image on after you populate and solder -- parts would get in the way,
etc.

The solution I've found is pad printing [2]. This is a process that is similar
to silkscreening t-shirts, but instead of pushing ink through a screen, a
design is picked up by a silicone pad and deposited on a PCB. I've done this
with 'blockchain token Tide Pods' (I made a blockchain of Tide Pods), and
various designs for other 'artistic' PCBs. Pad printing also has the advantage
in that every city has a shop that does pad printing, and provided the design
you want to print is small enough, this is very easy to contract out. Pad
printing is highly geared towards mass-production, whereas UV printing is low-
volume on the order of dozens or hundreds of units.

This isn't to diminish how cool this is. There's an entire community of people
building artistic PCBs out there that would love this capability. Only wish
there was a bit more information about obtaining, setting up, and producing UV
color PCBs

[1][https://imgur.com/wgmO1jK](https://imgur.com/wgmO1jK)
[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rTrSIKjpNY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rTrSIKjpNY)

~~~
schappim
Hi, I'm Marcus from Little Bird.

>> Makernet

I believe they were only doing pad printing/silk printing.

>> The problem with _all_ of these solutions is that these coatings do not
work in a reflow oven.

PCBs can be printed on before population with parts (although not always
required depending on the design).

We bake our PCBs, _specifically in reflow ovens_. We adjust our colours so
that they match the target colour after heating cycle completes.

>> The solution I've found is pad printing

We looked into pad printing, but it was too limiting in terms of setup time
and graphics.

It also lacked the ability to for mass customisation of products.

~~~
cmroanirgo
Marcus,

Great that you're doing so well! I used to buy some components off you when LB
was still a part time thing for you... many many moons ago. Love that you're
still exploring and pushing your own boundaries!

~~~
schappim
Thanks Craig!

The real credit should go to Maddy who consistently does the drudge work day
in, day out. This frees me to explore things with the amazing JP Liew.

------
kasbah
Beautiful! If you are interested in making custom designs for a process like
this (or even for the regular PCB processes) then you might want to check out
SVG2Shenzhen which lets you export from Inkscape to KiCad on all PCB layers.

[https://github.com/badgeek/svg2shenzhen/](https://github.com/badgeek/svg2shenzhen/)

~~~
SuperPaintMan
You can also get good results by dithering images and using the default bitmap
importer packaged with KiCad! I posted a link to some images below, been using
the technique for a while now. Not as sexy as full colour but it works with
damn near all fabs.

[https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo-
kit](https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo-kit)

------
lostgame
Hey, this is very cool, and excellently-executed. It would be very neat to
have clear cases on stuff like this, such as the game controller presented as
an example.

------
peterburkimsher
What I'd like to see is a silkscreen design where the traces are coloured, for
educational purposes.

If every ground point was black, and every V+ trace coloured red, it would
help students not to short out their boards.

~~~
taneq
Every PCB CAD package I've ever used gives you this view while you're laying
out the board, so the easiest way would be to just take a screenshot of that.

If you wanted to get a bit fancier then generate it directly from the Gerber
files. :)

------
bacon_waffle
Nice!

If you're interested in graphics using more traditional manufacturing,
halftone can work well on PCBs. It's not too hard to do with your favourite
raster graphics and CAD packages. If you use KiCad, here's a shameless plug
for a toy project:
[https://github.com/ianrrees/kicad_halftone](https://github.com/ianrrees/kicad_halftone)
.

~~~
schappim
I like the idea, do you have a photo of the end result (on a PCB)?

~~~
SuperPaintMan
I actually do this with my programmable keyboards! There's some images on the
site if you browse around :)

[https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo-
kit](https://www.gboards.ca/product/gergo-kit)

------
mysterydip
First, I really like how these turned out. I'm sure the market for this is
niche conpared to the overall market for PCBs, but a great option for those
who want it.

Second, I hadn't heard of the CC public patent license before, but it seems
like a good way to go to keep an idea "free", rather than not pursue a patent.

~~~
anbop
The market is niche but not necessarily the profit pool. Dell buys PCBs from
Foxconn who buys the components in large bidding processes from commodity
vendors who probably are eking out basis points of profit. Whereas if
someone’s making this for a hobby project or a piece of home decor they might
be willing to pay $20 for the printing. Could be a very nice profit stream.

------
kazinator
Neat! This seems like an easy DIY.

I have a bunch of experience making PCBs at home using laser printer toner
transfer. Next time I have an opportunity to build something, I will try to
transfer an underlying image onto the silk side of a one-sided PCB, followed
by the silk screen layer itself. Probably, I will merge the images digitally
to do it in one transfer.

Typically, PCB layout software doesn't support that sort of thing, but when I
do toner transfer, the artwork ultimately ends up in a mirror-imaged .PNG file
anyway. That can easily be merged with color imagery.

------
anfractuosity
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyS37xjVvC8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyS37xjVvC8)
is it similar to that, using inkjet printing + coating (which the UV light
would be used to cure)?

Edit:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbed_digital_printer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbed_digital_printer)
has some info on UV printers, seems you can get inks which are themselves
curable under UV.

~~~
schappim
I'm Marcus one of the co-founders of Little Bird. Yup you can get some inks
that are curable (primarily designed for doing cases), you can also get UV
curing top-coats.

------
DanBC
These look lovely.

Can you talk a bit about how the PCBs will work in production?

How do component silk screens work? What about fiducial marks? Do machine
vision systems (when looking for fiducials) cope with the graphics or do they
get confused?

~~~
schappim
>> How do component silk screens work?

Component silk fiducial marks/screens/ident layers (where necessary) are
merged into the graphic being applied.

>> do they get confused?

Naturally the milage will vary depending on your Pick and Place. We use a
CHM-T48VB, and have yet to have a problem. It would be interesting to test
what the limits are...

------
equalunique
I'd purchase that first PCB just for the Memphis design on it.

~~~
schappim
Thank you for putting a name to this. We've been calling it attack of the 90s.
I guess things took a little longer to get to Australia.

------
the_gipsy
This could be a thing for custom keyboards.

~~~
SuperPaintMan
That's my gameplan :)

------
taneq
I can’t believe that nobody has ever applied a full colour decal to a pcb
before, but this is still pretty awesome.

~~~
schappim
Yeah the results can be pretty sexy. Here is a higher res photo of what can be
done:

[https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-
Shot-2019-07-18-09-36...](https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-
Shot-2019-07-18-09-36-38.80.png)

------
nullobject
Looks amazing, well done.

------
r0gueSch0lar
This is awesome!

