Mark Hughes and Elijah Gracia will host the Hack Chat on Wednesday, March 11, 2020 at noon Pacific Time.
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There's no way to overestimate the degree to which the invention of the printed circuit board revolutionized electronics. What was once the work of craftspeople weaving circuits together with discrete components, terminal strips, and wiring harnesses could now be accomplished with dedicated machines, making circuit construction an almost human-free process. And it was all made possible by figuring out how to make copper foil stick to a flat board, and how to remove some of it while leaving the rest behind.Once those traces are formed, however, there's more work to be done. Bare copper is famously reactive stuff, and oxides soon form that will make the traces difficult to solder later. There are hundreds of different ways to prevent this, and PCB surface finishing has become almost an art form itself. Depending on the requirements for the circuit, traces can be coated with tin, lead, gold, nickel, or any combination of the above, using processes ranging from electroplating to immersion in chemical baths. And the traces aren't the only finishes; solder resist and silkscreening are both important to the usability and durability of the finished board.
For this Hack Chat, we'll be talking to Elijah Gracia and Mark Hughes from Royal Circuit Solutions. They're both intimately familiar with the full range of PCB coatings and treatments, and they'll help us make sense of the alphabet soup: HASL, OSP, ENIG, IAg, LPI, and the rest. We'll learn what the different finishes do, which to choose under what circumstances, and perhaps even learn a bit about how to make our homebrew boards look a little more professional and perform a bit better.
Welcome Mark and Elijah! Can you start us off with a little about yourselves?
