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| Vintage PCB appearance... |
Posted by: pizzigri on 2024-11-22 10:45:36
So I started looking at older PCB from the 70s, all the way to early 90s... and there are PCB materials that look fantastic. I do not understand why no one offer these materials, and I do not mean the traces such as gold (yes pure gold and not enig) like some of the early HP lab stuff, but the actual FRP board material.
Does anybody know who offers a PCB like these?
I mean look at how nice this is: |
Posted by: finkmac on 2024-11-22 10:49:50
a single layer board? |
Posted by: pizzigri on 2024-11-22 10:50:29
No, I mean the "neutral/clear" color of the PCB.
Also like something max1zzz posted: |
Posted by: olePigeon on 2024-11-22 11:34:21
Is it because they don't have a mask? |
Posted by: treellama on 2024-11-22 11:37:53
OSHPark will do a clear solder mask |
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2024-11-22 11:39:40
You can get fibreglass PCB with no mask or clear mask, but 'no mask' does make it significantly harder to solder. |
Posted by: olePigeon on 2024-11-22 12:06:16
No solder mask with gold traces does look really cool. My dad has an unpopulated PCB memory board from an old mainframe. Looks really neat. |
Posted by: pizzigri on 2024-11-22 15:25:15
I have to try OSHpark with clear mask! |
Posted by: max1zzz on 2024-11-27 09:53:12
My experience with clear mask is it gets expensive quickly. I always wanted to get some LC boards made with clear mask but PCBWay quoted me about $400 for 5 iirc. (I also asked them for a quote for IIci boards with clear soldermask and a black core and they quoted me about $3K for 5!)
It looks very cool but I have never been able to justify the cost.
Though that Rocket PCB actually has a yellow soldermask not a clear one, it just seems to have been made from a exceptionally translucent substrate which means you can see the inner traces (Which has been making reverse engineering much easier 🙂 ) |
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