That state of metric conversion in the US

rule!

I can think in 16s and 32s as well as 10s. The problems start when you mix them, so don't do that.

It *is* correct.

Because PC boards are an art form, and I'd like for some others to post their boards, styles, colors.

How about you? Do you design electronics? Does it wind up on PC boards? Show us some.

It's a public discussion group. Attention is a basic part of the process.

Show us some PC boards that you designed.

Yes, I know it does engineering notation, with powers of ten limited to multiples of three, but it doesn't do SI multiplier prefixes. It can do 100E-9, but not 100n. Not without jumping through lots of hoops, anyway.

Jeroen Belleman

Here is my most recent one. Nothing spectacular I guess but it turned out well, worked first time and only took a couple of days.

Bottom right quadrant is a 8 channel 0-10V output. An ADUC7021 microcontroller, with a pretty good reference and 12 bit DAC, generates the 8 values in sequence. A CMOS switch "demultiplexes" this onto a set of capacitors to hold the voltage. Opamps then boost this 0-2.5V to

The rest of the board is a USB to RS485 adapter and a boost power supply generating 12V from the USB.

In fact the RS485 carries modbus traffic, and the microcontroller snoops on this traffic and extracts the relevant values for the analog outputs. When the USB is disconnected, the microcontroller takes over (reversing roles) and becomes the modbus master. That bit was a PITA.

It's black because I thought it would look cool, but the assemblers did not like it, they had to adjust the sensor on the P&P to get the conveyor to stop the board in the right place or something. And you can't see the tracks very well.

It is two-layer, routed basically single layer style on top and groundplane underneath. Barring a couple of short hops I expect.

It goes in one of those extruded style aluminium enclosures, that's why the funny cutout on the right, to stop the board moving around in the case.

Ooh, a Darth Vader black PC board. We did some black boards recently to reduce leaking into some photodiodes through the PCB.

Thanks, (I was going to take a pic of an old circuit, but too many screws and too little time today.)

I'm guessing you won't do the black pcb again unless you need it. (It seems for anything I make, the mistakes always stay longer in my memory, than any successes.

George H.

M - from the Roman mille, meaning thousand.

This is one of those times when you are acting like you are 12. What is your point?

I do design PCBs, but not as art. Most of my stuff is very small and often very low power. I find that I can make it tiny, I can make it good, I can make it pretty : pick two.

I thought you were talking about the issue we had been discussing, PCB software in relation to metric vs. inch. But I guess we are making a hard left turn... or do you make right turns? I don't recall.

I would post some boards, but I can't find my pics. I'll have to fire up the old desktop. I'm sure they are on there.

Does anyone know who this guy is? He is worse than krw with calling everyone names. Is he a kid or something? I swear several of the posters here are only 12.

Yes, I use that relationship all the time. Just the other day I was converting my attic Parsecs to... well something. What is a Parsec again and why are they in your attic?

Actually I'm doing somthing soon where that might be a good idea, for same reason.

Actually we have several boards that go in that same box,we did them all black. It's no real problem; the boards are bare board tested so we don't really need to be able to e.g. find track shorts. Some of the others have more writing on them for the customer wiring, that was the original excuse for the black actually (so the writing would show up well). Plus I thought it looked cool, especially unpopulated, all black and gold.

We do some red ones because a customer wanted a variant distinguised from their "standard" product.

Our own product range uses blue because it is sort of our company colour. And again the gold on blue looks nice :)

One of my customers decided to use red to flag boards that were especially ESD sensitive. QC intervened, and soon all boards were red.

Yeah, we like yellow on blue. White on green is so boring.

That's what people with little real understanding do to make their mark. You can be in a product design meeting, say, and spend most of it talking about the technical stuff with the other technical person in the room. All the marketing and sales people sit there like lemons. Then, what color should it be? Yes! Finally something they can have an opinion on and they spring into life, spend the next two hours deciding it. And then it changes three times in the next three meetings.

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.highlandtechnology.com  jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

OK here's my only circuit with some artistic value.

One of our production people is a 'real' artist, he builds the above lamp, and took it to one of his shows. Part of the beauty is the nice pick color from the bulb.

(Green and white PCB though...)

George H.

ESD

Well that's a bit retro isn't it? Reminds me of the inside of some of my ebay instruments. Not that there is anything wrong with that!

Here is the only through-hole board I have done in last ~10 years.

Bit boring; yours is more interesting.