Circuitless PCB shown as a faceplate for a digital clock
If there is no circuitry on a printed circuit board, does it stop being a "PCB" and maybe just become a "PB"?
Call them what you will, the fact that PCBs have become so cheap and easy to design and manufacture lends them to more creative uses than just wiring for a project. In this case, [Jeremy Cook] put one to work as a faceplate for his "742 Clock", a name that plays on the fact that its seven-segment display is 42mm tall, plus it's "24/7 " upside down.< /p>
In addition to the circuit board that houses the Wemos ESP32 module and LEDs, a circuitless board has been designed with gaps in the solder mask to act as light pipes. Sandwiched between the boards is a 3D printed mask, to control the light and direct it only through the light pipes. [Jeremy] went through a few iterations of diffuser and mask designs, finally coming up with a combination that works well and looks good. He mentions a possible redesign of the faceplate to include a copper backplane for better opacity, which we think is a good idea. We would also like to see how the different substrates work; would boards of different thickness or using FR-4 with different glass transition temperatures work better? Watch the video below and see what you think.
We are seeing more and more PCBs appear as structural elements, from enclosures to control panels and even tools, and we welcome this trend. But what we really approve of is what [Jeremy] has done here by making this clock just a dumb display that gets the time from the network via NTP. If all three digital clocks in our kitchen did the same thing, maybe they wouldn't each be an infuriatingly out of step minute with the others.
If there is no circuitry on a printed circuit board, does it stop being a "PCB" and maybe just become a "PB"?
Call them what you will, the fact that PCBs have become so cheap and easy to design and manufacture lends them to more creative uses than just wiring for a project. In this case, [Jeremy Cook] put one to work as a faceplate for his "742 Clock", a name that plays on the fact that its seven-segment display is 42mm tall, plus it's "24/7 " upside down.< /p>
In addition to the circuit board that houses the Wemos ESP32 module and LEDs, a circuitless board has been designed with gaps in the solder mask to act as light pipes. Sandwiched between the boards is a 3D printed mask, to control the light and direct it only through the light pipes. [Jeremy] went through a few iterations of diffuser and mask designs, finally coming up with a combination that works well and looks good. He mentions a possible redesign of the faceplate to include a copper backplane for better opacity, which we think is a good idea. We would also like to see how the different substrates work; would boards of different thickness or using FR-4 with different glass transition temperatures work better? Watch the video below and see what you think.
We are seeing more and more PCBs appear as structural elements, from enclosures to control panels and even tools, and we welcome this trend. But what we really approve of is what [Jeremy] has done here by making this clock just a dumb display that gets the time from the network via NTP. If all three digital clocks in our kitchen did the same thing, maybe they wouldn't each be an infuriatingly out of step minute with the others.
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