6 ms·

Show HN: PCBs with Full-Color Graphics

140 points by schappim 7y ago

taneq 7y ago
I can’t believe that nobody has ever applied a full colour decal to a pcb before, but this is still pretty awesome.
- schappim 7y ago
  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-2019-07-18-09-36-38.80.png https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-Shot-2019-07-18-09-36...
- gothroach 7y ago
  The thing is, there have been full color PCBs available in the past, apparently just not recently. I've ordered a few CMYK screened PCBs before, I'll see if I can dig them up again because they're gorgeous. It feels a tad disingenuous to be saying they have the first ever, but they're likely the only ones currently doing it. Edit: I forgot to mention, these are far more refined than what I have, the ones I have have a noticeable amount of dithering and are generally lower resolution. They're still full color though!
anfractuosity 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
mysterydip 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
lostgame 7y ago
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.
nullobject 7y ago
Looks amazing, well done.
wanderingjew 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
hatsunearu 7y ago
Of course it's patented. By a company that seems to make fake makey makeys.
- schappim 7y ago
  Boards sold on makeymakey.com (since moving away from the US based SparkFun Electronics Inc for production) are made in China, are no longer open-source, lack the gold finish PCB (now silver), moved from AVR to PIC, and no longer Arduino compatible. So who is making fake makey makeys? [Edit] It should be noted that the ShakeUp has a gyroscope, accelerometer and temperature sensor and has way more alligator inputs than product sold on makeymakey.com . It is also made in Australia whilst being half the price of the competition...
- r0gueSch0lar 7y ago
  I thought the guys who made Makey Makey made it open source and released the files for anyone to make and contribute back to.
r0gueSch0lar 7y ago
This is awesome!
peterburkimsher 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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. :)
- schappim 7y ago
  This is totally doable.
bacon_waffle 7y ago
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 7y ago
  I like the idea, do you have a photo of the end result (on a PCB)?
  - SuperPaintMan 7y ago
    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
  - bacon_waffle 7y ago
    Thanks! I've updated the examples on the github repo to include a PCB. It's not the most artfully done thing, but I think gets the idea across.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
equalunique 7y ago
I'd purchase that first PCB just for the Memphis design on it.
- schappim 7y ago
  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.
DanBC 7y ago
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 7y ago
  >> 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...
the_gipsy 7y ago
This could be a thing for custom keyboards.
- SuperPaintMan 7y ago
  That's my gameplan :)
kasbah 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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
kazinator 7y ago
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.

140 points by schappim 7y ago

taneq 7y ago

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

schappim 7y ago
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-2019-07-18-09-36-38.80.png https://files.littlebird.com.au/Screen-Shot-2019-07-18-09-36...
gothroach 7y ago
The thing is, there have been full color PCBs available in the past, apparently just not recently. I've ordered a few CMYK screened PCBs before, I'll see if I can dig them up again because they're gorgeous. It feels a tad disingenuous to be saying they have the first ever, but they're likely the only ones currently doing it. Edit: I forgot to mention, these are far more refined than what I have, the ones I have have a noticeable amount of dithering and are generally lower resolution. They're still full color though!

anfractuosity 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

mysterydip 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

lostgame 7y ago

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.

nullobject 7y ago

Looks amazing, well done.

wanderingjew 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

hatsunearu 7y ago

Of course it's patented. By a company that seems to make fake makey makeys.

schappim 7y ago
Boards sold on makeymakey.com (since moving away from the US based SparkFun Electronics Inc for production) are made in China, are no longer open-source, lack the gold finish PCB (now silver), moved from AVR to PIC, and no longer Arduino compatible. So who is making fake makey makeys? [Edit] It should be noted that the ShakeUp has a gyroscope, accelerometer and temperature sensor and has way more alligator inputs than product sold on makeymakey.com . It is also made in Australia whilst being half the price of the competition...
r0gueSch0lar 7y ago
I thought the guys who made Makey Makey made it open source and released the files for anyone to make and contribute back to.

r0gueSch0lar 7y ago

This is awesome!

peterburkimsher 7y ago

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 7y ago
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. :)
schappim 7y ago
This is totally doable.

bacon_waffle 7y ago

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 7y ago
I like the idea, do you have a photo of the end result (on a PCB)?
- SuperPaintMan 7y ago
  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
- bacon_waffle 7y ago
  Thanks! I've updated the examples on the github repo to include a PCB. It's not the most artfully done thing, but I think gets the idea across.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

equalunique 7y ago

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

schappim 7y ago
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.

DanBC 7y ago

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 7y ago
>> 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...

the_gipsy 7y ago

This could be a thing for custom keyboards.

SuperPaintMan 7y ago
That's my gameplan :)

kasbah 7y ago

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 7y ago
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

kazinator 7y ago

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.