![]() This process is very manual, and fabricators must carefully manage the amount of ink, screen mesh, and drying times. Traditional silkscreening: Using a stencil produced by CAD data as a template, non-conductive ink is pushed through a polyester screen onto the circuit board with a squeegee.Unfortunately, they are also very expensive because of the amount of ink used and setup costs. Although not as precise as direct printing, LPI silkscreens are very detailed. The silkscreen images are then exposed with a UV light, allowed to cure, and then remain on the board after the unexposed epoxy is washed off. ![]() LPI (liquid photo imaging): A photo-imageable liquid epoxy is applied to the entire circuit board using the same process as solder mask application.This method provides the most accurate silkscreen image on the board with the smallest lines and spaces, but it is also the most expensive because each board is processed individually. Direct printing: Acrylic ink is directly applied to the board from the CAD manufacturing data using an inkjet printer.Silkscreen information can be applied with different methods, with the following three being the most common: Legal data, including the company’s name, contact information, and copyright date.Board information, including name, part number, and revision.The information conveyed by the silkscreen will vary with each board depending on its needs and application, but, in general, you will find the following categories on most PCBs: Although other applications are used for text markings, and PCB materials such as solder paste may also be screen printed, “silkscreen” has become the industry-accepted term for the PCB information layer. The silkscreen on a printed circuit board refers to the information and data marked in ink to identify the board and its individual components. Let’s take a deeper look into what circuit board designers need to know about this labeling process in these PCB silkscreen guidelines. These markings are referred to as the silkscreen, thanks to one of the more common methods used to apply the non-conductive epoxy ink to the circuit board. In printed circuit board design and manufacturing, we avoid this problem by adding markings on the fabricated board to label the components, specify settings, and even identify the board. The problem was that our grandmother relied on instructions like “use a robin’s egg size amount of butter” or “add molasses until it looks right.” Without clear building instructions, it is next to impossible to cook or manufacture something the way it is intended to be. PCB silkscreen reference designators identify the parts on a circuit boardĪfter a collection of our grandmother’s favorite recipes was published in honor of her memory, our family soon discovered that preparing these dishes was a lot harder than expected. Using the silkscreen features in Cadence’s Allegro PCB Editor
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