Tired of drab off-yellow or pale-green PCBs? For years, I’ve been trying to find color board stock to make my circuits more attractive. Finally, I was able to locate and buy black, red, and blue single-sided copper clad boards.
Yellowish-green (standard), black, blue, and red colored copper clad circuit board.
This isn’t paint, dye, marker, or silkscreen. The substrate itself is colored.
I would have gladly purchased additional colors, such as true-green, purple, pink, yellow, white, and clear. And, I would have preferred double-sided boards. However, many hobbyists prefer single-sided boards when they etch PCBs at home, as it avoids alignment issues, reduces manual labor, and decreases etching time. So, no problem, I took the opportunity to create a single-sided open-faced (no container) Sandwich robot.
Open-Face Sandwich robot with red PCB.
The results are really beautiful.
Here is a blue PCB. One side has copper traces and the other side is plain. As you can see, the board material is solid blue throughout.
Both sides of a blue PCB. Left: Copper traces. Right: Components
Eagle-eyed readers may notice a couple of interesting details on the component side of the board. First, there are some bare wires that act as second-side traces, due to a lack of copper on that side. Second, the DIP socket in the middle of the board is clear, not the usual black.
Notice, as well, that I selected slightly fancier trimpots with yellow Phillips-head (crosshead) adjustment dials. They are available from Digi-Key, part #CT6ER203.
The next pages of this article discuss:
