Do software engineers sweat? Maybe you'd more likely encounter cigarette smoke and coke on their sticky fingers. ;) ;)

Jeff Condit

----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Wiseman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Protel EDA Discussion List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 12:36 PM
Subject: Re: [PEDA] Serializing PCBs



25/11/2004 19:32:28, Darcy Davis
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Can fabricators silkscreen a unique incrementing serial number
on each
board?

Silk Screening isn't really that sort of a process. Laser etching serial numbers (and barcodes) into a patch of soldermask or silkscreen, or just sticking sequential serial number stickers onto the boards, works well. (Many places sell sequential stickers, with or withut barcodes, in all sorts of materials and sizes) For volume stuff, we tend to stick serial number / barcode stickers on the PCB, then read it back off the board with a scanner and blow it into flash at final test, so the firmware and label agree. It's just a small part of the final test (or built-board test) jig, and doesn't give much trouble. For low-volume stuff, a white patch of silkscreen and a permanent marker does the job. If I want it to survive washing, and handling by sweaty software-engineer fingers, I'll laser a number in as well. If there's no room, the number goes into the side of the PCB, or gets burned into the top of a chip package, but I try to avoid that. There are also silicon serial numbers, on a one-wire bus, but they cost money, and you still tend to want a human-readable sticker.

(The laser I've got for in-house stuff is
http://www.synrad.com/fenix/ . Top toy, makes a good job of
etching labels onto anodised aluminium, too. Probably a bit
unnecessary for home use, but ebay brings many temptations :)

Steve





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