PCB colour and glare

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Cicero

Active Member
Hi all,

Recently our company made a decision to use different colour PCB's to easily identify what kind of equipment they go into. Simple enough, red PCB's go in equipment X, and green PCB's go in equipment Y etc. We currently have 4 different colours, green, yellow, red and blue boards.

Seemed like an easy decision to make, with little to no consequences, however I had a coworker come to me today - who does assembly soldering for us - asking why we had changed the colours, and said she was having problems with glare off them. We hand populate/solder a large quantity of boards in house.

Initially I laughed it off, but on further thought she may have a point. Green with white silkscreen provides great contrast, but some other colours less so. Red with white silkscreen probably being the worse. I deliberately stay away from black, as its impossible to see where tracks go on them.

Have any of you had similar experiences and have any input?
 
I find the pads cause way more glare than the PCB. But no way around that. But I can see why yellow might be bright. Dim the worklight a bit?

I'm surprised white on red has the least contrast. I would have guessed yellow.
 
How about the smell of a pcb?
I used fiberglass Veroboard from England for years then it became difficult to buy in Canada. So I bought high quality stripboard made in China. The stink was so bad I threw it away. It was probably made of compressed Chinese sewage.
 
I use Busboard. Mouser or solarbotics,
 
From back in my TV days, only 11% of the color receptors in the eye are for blue light. That is why anything on a blue background looks fuzzy (compared to a green background).

To mitigate glare, change the lighting. Obvious - change the incident angle. Less obvious - Depending on the surface temperature of the light fixtures, as an experiment you can cover the lights with cheese cloth and see what happens.

ak
 
Why do you turn every thread into a racist rant against the Chinese?

Mike.
 
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ebay [often means] Chinese. I didn't say Chinese people are bad, instead I say the junk [a lot of them] sell on ebay is bad.
I didn't make the video of a Chinese 18650 Li-ion battery sold on ebay that is shown to be full of rice flour.
I am Not racist.

<Mod edit: Changed wording in [] to remove generic stereotypes>
 
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Yellow boards come with black silkscreen, which to me is much harder to read than white. Maybe it's the different process used, but the text appears less dense.

I use black soldermask. Hate it but use it where I don't want somebody to trace out my board. My client reverse-engineered a schematic from a black board (claimed it had to be in the documentation, although I an selling them a "thing", not a design) - I hope he cussed me out with every trace!
 
I am Not racist.

I dare say one of the big signs of being a racist is making a statement that you are not a racist.

You just said everyone on ebay is Chinese and everyone on ebay is a crook. Do the math.

Both of your statements are untrue. I and many other people here have told you they buy quality products on ebay, including those from Chinese vendors.


 
You, know...I don't think anyone would have cared if it came up in a thread about the smell of PCBs or PCB quality. Except that in this thread, the smell of PCBs has nothing to do with anything.
 
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