Hi there - recently a rep brought by a PCB that was showing off one of their connectors. On the back of it there was some silkscreen describing the connector and giving some other information. What caught my eye was that the silkscreen was in something like 3 or 4 colors! Has anybody ever seen this before? Is it common for a PCB fab to be able to do this? Is it very expensive?
Also - has anybody ever seen a board with multiple colors of solder mask? I mean, how cool would it be to have a PCB with white and black striped soldermask? Or even a houndstooth pattern?
Most of my PCBs end up in very visible locations so this actually matters to me, as trivial as I expect it will seem to most of you.
You'd need a silkscreen gerber file for each color, same goes for soldermask. It would be expensive since they would have to stop the machine, change the color of lacquer, flush the machine through with the new color, etc... Silkscreens are less intensive but you still need to make the silkscreen and call out the different colors. Call your local PCB shop and discuss it with them, they're usually open to all kinds of creative fiddling.
I wouldn't call it "common", but there's nothing to prevent you from running the board through as many layers of silkscreen you want to. You'd have to do the color seps, of course, and get the screens made, and either have somebody do it or build a frame with registration and do it yourself.
For cost, probably a little less than 3X or 4X the cost for one color.
That's a different story, unless the solder mask is screened on, then see above. :-)
I think you can order board material in different colors - you could also look into electroplating, etc.
More likely the additional colors would be done at a silk-screen shop, since the average PCB fab house seems to generally silk screen in any color you like so long as it's white.
Multi colour solder mask is also a possibility. No different to the silk screen process. Don't use black/grey, you cant see solder whiskers through them.........
Not my forte', but a place I worked while in college had a rather impressive PCB that was Royal Blue in color, with gold-colored solder joints. Not sure how they did it, but it was really cool to look at...
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I would expect any PCB fabricator can do multi-color silk screen. All you have to do is provide them with the multiple Gerber layers and instructions on what color to do each layer in. Possibly, they may also need to know the ORDER in which to print the colors, if one is to appear over another.
Generally, the fabs I work with don't actually charge for the silk screen, ie. no different price for no silkscreen, only one side, or both sides. But, they might charge a small extra fee for more than one color.
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