We're goign to cover how to make your pcbs look amazing the world's first ever pcb time lapse
and you have a chance to win free test gear it's been said circuit design and layout is an art form
but some people have literally made it an art form art pcbs that are both aesthetically pleasing and
functioning circuits I've always wanted to make my own art pcb so I gave it a shot and made this
this is just part of the whole project there's more including an attempt to time lapse so stick
around first that will cover how to make an art pcb i've always secretly wanted a custom
label for my oscilloscope i even made a super limited run for dave jones a few years back but
could never really show it or use it because it was for him
oh yeah dave's is a sticker like our normal labels but when i saw the Osh park after dark
pcbs and how stinking awesome they look i knew my time had come this was it 2020 was my year
keep in mind this is going through my headline like january 2020 so feel free to extrapolate
the next 15 months and here we are it's spring 2021 and i'm finally ready to reveal the process
so here's how to make an art pcb all with free open source software step one for adding art
to a pcb is starting with a game plan you have to know what you want to make and how it's all
put together before you even think about opening up your pcb design software trust me on this one
with a pcb the variety of colors you can use is super limited you can only use maybe five colors
on a pcb because of the fabrication process so to understand what your final result will be you have
to understand the manufacturing process it goes like this first you have the base fr4 a fiberglass
circuit board material usually it's kind of yellow but for mine i use the osh park black fr4 by the
way this video is not sponsored by ash park i just think it looks really cool and shout out to dan at
osh park support for being super helpful with this project it would not have looked nearly as good
without his help they also gave me 50 20 ash park gift cards to give away to you more on that at the
end of the video so the fr4 is your first color on top of the fr4 the fab lays down a copper layer
this is usually for traces and ground planes but we can use it as a copper color then the fab puts
down solder mask solder mask comes in a bunch of different colors this is what gives many boards
their green color its green solder mask there are a bunch of different colors depending on
the fab for the after dark it's actually a clear solder mask so we can see the copper underneath
it and also get this cool reflective matte finish a quick warning in your pcb program you also mark
where you don't want solder mask applied so it's negative you can see what the file looks like
versus what the board looks like it's a negative image so the solder mask is color number three the
last color we can use is a metallic finish copper oxidizes which is not good for electronics so
after the solder mask the fab adds a metal coating to the exposed copper to protect it
sometimes it's coated with tin or lead known as hasl and looks silver but in this case we used an
enig finish which is literally a gold finish about a tenth of a micron thick with enig any exposed
copper gets coated in three to five microns of nickel and then the nickel gets coated in
a bit of gold so color number four is literally gold pcb now stands for printed circuit bling
the last color is the silkscreen layer which is white printing that you see on circuits everywhere
so color number five is your silk screen so to make an art pcb you can use at most five colors
usually three or four is best because exposed copper and fr4 typically get covered up now that
we know our colors we're finally ready to start making our own art pcb the first tool we need is
an open source vector graphics program called inkscape it's like adobe illustrator but free
and it has a pcb specific plugin we need take your art file and group each color into its own layer
quick note this is not an inkscape tutorial or a keycad tutorial but a strategy tutorial the main
steps you need to take and not the specific clicks so this should work even if the software updates
and changes in the future so we want a layered image in inkscape where each color is one layer
and you know what pcb layer those colors correspond to for example on this board i
started from this adobe illustrator file i got from r d rasterized the colors and imported it
into inkscape once we have our color layers we also need to define the shape of our board
so the fab knows where to cut the edges and where to make holes these cut lines should be just
aligned and escape not a solid polygon or shape so now we have our colors and our board shape
it's time to bring them into our pcb tool download and install the svg to shenzhen inkscape plugin
this lets you save vector layers in inkscape as pcb layers awesome so take each of your layers and
one by one assign them to a pcb layer using the svg to shenzhen plugin now we have a set of files
we can use in our pcb tool i've done all this with kicad which is an open source pcb design tool
take each of your files from svg to shenzhen and import them as a footprint into keycad once you
have a footprint you can drop them into pcb new i recommend starting with your cuts since
that will give you an outline to work with and then pulling in your metal mask and silk layers
if you want to make a functional art pcb all you have to do is make a normal pcb but then also do
all that stuff we just did again coming in with a solid game plan is incredibly important you want
to make sure your pcb is routable and dropping gold art features isn't going to get in the way
of your actual circuit routing then just export your board and send the gerbers to the faf once
you have a plan there are only three main steps to make an art pcb first prep your art file putting
each color and cut lines on their own layer or even their own file in inkscape second export
the files from inkscape with the svg to shenzhen plugin and add these files as footprints in keycap
third place your new art footprints into pcb new and export to the fap for my boards i ended up
just getting my whole own panel smaller pcbs are usually fabbed on these larger panels with
multiple circuits per board and i had extra space on the panel which to me meant one thing free pcbs
so with very limited time i whipped up an led strip top panel and i was smart enough to not put
a year on that one and a bunch of these little 20 millimeter circles i thought since i had nothing
to lose why not make a time-lapse for video intros and outros and not just a time lapse where the
things move around on camera but where the art on the board itself changes i recorded the entire pcb
time lapse making process start to finish it wasn't that exciting but then i accidentally
deleted all the files anyway so instead here's an accurate representation of me making these files
this is how the magic happens and a mere 15 months later we have the world's first
ever attempted pcb time lapse surely no one is bored enough to have tried this already i haven't
actually seen these yet i just got the files back like 10 minutes ago so i'm curious to take a look
that's so short oh we spent so much time maybe we loop it in editing
fortunately i knew it would be so short so we put together a longer time lapse that's
both a traditional time lapse and part pcb time lapse let's take a look at that one
that's actually pretty cool i'll take it there's one more time lapse that i'll put at the end of
this video i'll also link some other helpful art pcb guides down below and there's a link
for keysight university live which is happening right now come join me i'm giving away a ton of
free cash gear test gear and live streaming every Tuesday including giving away this scope there's
a ton of other neat stuff going on like this little guy so go see what that's about you can
get one and if you missed the first half of the event there's a ton of ketchup today's test gear
winners are here and a huge shout out to osh park for their help with this project and gift cards
the first 50 people to email kulive keysight.com with the subject line printed circuit bling we'll
get a code for a 20 gift card i might even ship out a couple of these as well please only email
me if you're actually gonna use the code with osh park and also thanks to eurocircuits for
letting me use their fabulous fab footage they are not affiliated with ash park but they do have
a couple excellent videos that go into the pcb fab process in more detail and if you're in europe you
should go check them out there's a link for those below i'm Daniel Bogdanoff thanks for watching
oh yeah