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Ask HN: Why do we bother screenprinting mass-produced PCBs?
2 points by mwint on April 1, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment
I was reading the recent front-page article on Apple power supplies[0], and this image[1] caught my attention.

I’ve been used to seeing white screen printing on PCBs, never really asking why. But… why? Between the ink for billions of PCBs produced every year, plus adding the screen printing step to the process, these have to cost some real money for something no customer really cares about.

Maybe it’s useful for development, return-from-field debugging? Maybe for alignment of automatic pick-and-place machines?

Just curious what the tradeoffs are in reality.

[0]: http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html?m=1 [1]: http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html?m=1




I don't really know, but my guess is that silkscreens are cheap and make manufacturing a lot easier. In particular, if the board isn't labeled, they won't know if is the right board and the right version. (Even for the boards I make, it's hard to keep track of the old version versus the new version if I don't put a number.) You could label it in the copper layer, but that's harder to read. A silkscreen will make manufacturing a lot easier since you can see what goes where. QA would also be a lot easier.




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