Circuit and Ornament

Did some adviser pull that out of a hat, or did you come up with it?

If you look at PCB layouts and you see something ornamental then perhaps the reason is that it isn't unintentional at all. As you said, there _is_ a lot of freedom in laying out a circuit board. Furthermore, there are so many factors affecting the circuit performance that the decisions about where to place components are usually a strong mix of rational decisions (rounded traces are often better from an electromagnetic compatibility standpoint, for instance) and the designer just "making it look right". Since "looking right" is usually a subset of "looking pretty" you get right to "ornamental" pretty quickly.

You can add to that the fact that many aftermarket personal computer boards are marketed directly to the computer-building public, and that if the packaging doesn't show the board the reviews in the magazines certainly will; All else being equal I suspect that a slightly technically superior but truly ugly board won't sell as well as a slightly inferior one that looks good.

Jim Williams's electronic sculptures are both artistic and functional.

See, for example, the "photo gallery" link at

I believe some pictures have appeared in IEEE journals in the past too.

Tim.

Compare and contrast with industrial assembly/conveyor lines. Certainly they have been photographed as "art" over the years, starting in the 1920's, but this was not their original intention. Their repeated forms and patterns (much like a PC board) can give rise to art.

Don't ignore plumbing/pneumatics that's intended to be art too - like a pipe organ.

Tim.

Many PC designers have strong artistic opinions, and there have been occasional "beauty contests" for PC board layouts. We sometimes add non-functional doodles or visual messages/puns to our boards.

But there is an untapped space for intentionally artistic PC boards, both bare boards and functional ones. The media itself has many possibilities: laminate thickness/color/shape/ridgid-flex/transparency, solder masks (why not multiple colors?), plating/patina effects, optical properties of laminates and plated thru-holes, many opportunities. Parts make it even more interesting.

I doubt the artistic/gallery types would get into it, though; it would be too real and too intimidating for them.

John

careful of the LEAD. (in the solder) Lots of stuff on a PCB is toxic I designed and laid out about 30 boards mostly RF, microwave. The engineering reasons drive the design.

Your topic is just "take pictures up close" I would choose pix of IC's myself. many of those online

I once had a new manager drag me over to an instrument that he had designed for a previous company. By pressing the right three buttons at power up you got a picture of the product team. After 8 years I still can't decide if it was really cool or a monumental waste of time.

Oh, and check out

An instrument developed by a company for which I once worked has a hidden pushbutton in the center of the array of membrane switches. When pressed, all functions are frozen and the message "Coffee break" is displayed until the button is pressed again.

I have included "secret local modes" in some of my designs, accessed by pressing an unlikely combination of controls (both display brighter and dimmer at the same time, for instance). That changes the front panel LEDs to a maintenance readout mode, displaying internals such as temperature, voltage, built-in-test status, etc, without requiring a test set hookup.

Here ya go! Knock yourself out:

All else being equal I suspect that a slightly

Oh, but I'd like to think that for us technically superior people, the one that performs the best will look the best. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

Printed Circuit Design magazine used to (still do, for all I know) have a contest for the coolest PC boards, with awards at some conference. I don't think there was an actual prize.

John

Hello John,

So what did the winner get? To be honest, it's the first time I hear about that. Cool.

Doodles, aren't those usually Dilbert related? Can't remember which one, maybe the uA709 but some chip had a smiley and the signatures of some of the chip designers in a corner on a mask.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Frank,

The only area where I'd think there is some requirement to follow form in order to achieve proper funtion is RF design. Radar, microwave transmitters, receivers, UHF or higher TV transmitters. VCRs and the like will be rather boring from that perspective. much of the layout will have been done automatic, not much human touch.

Regards, Joerg

Some years back a couple of friends worked in the FA department of our corporate purchasing group. They had a whole library of such "art". One was tryng to reverse engineer a circuit once, and ran into a roadblock. He simply couldn't figure out a shape, until he turned down the resolution significantly. A Kilroy was staring back at him - he was just looking at the nose and eyes.

A couple of years ago a warning went out to our PD folks to not play around with such things (condition of employment was the operative phrase). PHBs have no sense of humor at all.

Certainly. One product I worked on had a VDD/VSS short caused by the PD folks' signatures that weren't Verity checked.

I believe I've heard vague stories of electrical problems caused by the added graffito.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Hello Tim,

We had an ultrasound machine that could play an episode of "The Three Stooges" I believe. But that was only used to briefly check the sound card and other things. Other than that it was more like what Richard described, service mode. Press here three times, there twice, say whoop-dee-dou three times and the system displays its innards.

ROFL! I wonder how much real graffity is on chips that has never been disclosed. I mean, even a third party would likely not want to come forth with such a discovery since that would bluntly announce "hey, we just tried to reverse-engineer your chip and look what we found".

Regards, Joerg

Is Bauhaus German for dog kennel? Isn't the German for 'ornament' Schmuck?

To me, the same board can look ugly, foul, insulting and depressing- until I find the bug.... then it's a thing of almost divine beauty, an inspiration, a symphony in FR4...

Paul Burke

Hello John,

Thanks, these are cool. Especially the first two.

Regards, Joerg

Thanks for your answers and links. I will work on that topic and post the results. May be you are interested in that.

Ciao FuRanKu