Dye your own colour PCB

[peps1]

What You Need
A PCB to dye A Permanent Marker the colour you want to dye your PCB
Acetone (I use nail polish remover that has acetone as the main ingredient) 
Kitchen roll



Start off with a clean PCB, and colour the edges of the PCB before moving onto the reverse of and finally the front of the board totally covering in permanent marker. At this point it will look streaky and rough (like its just been colour in with a marker) but don't worry, the magic is yet to come!





Take a square of kitchen roll, and dab it with your acetone and wipe it over the PCB till the copper track shine though. This process will remove the streaky and rough marks made by the felt of the marker pen, leaving a beautiful smooth dyed finish ready for tinning & populating.




Now you have seen how easy the process is, why not experiment with some colours! I would like to thank Kat from Sonodrome for all here help

[intripped]

cooooollll!!!
I will try for sure!
thanks for sharing

[knealebrown]

nice, true diy

[chicago_mike]

And ye forth, the Lord looked upon the geeks of the Earth and the geeks had bespoked upon the Lord. Yeah Lord, we make our own shit! Aint it cool? And the Lord said it was good.

[Paul Marossy]

That's clever! 

[Steve Mavronis]

This should be a sticky. Great idea!

[rousejeremy]

Very nice!

[davent]

That looks great! Can now have coloured photoresist boards. Going to try it with the next boards i do. Thanks peps1!

dave

[John Lyons]

Looks neat but I think it depends on the material of the boards you use.
I would imagine that FR-4 would not be as porous and would not take
the stained/dyed process...would wash off with acetone. I could be wrong.

[bean]

I just gave this a try using a slightly different method (more dabbing). It came out pretty neat. Thanks for posting this!

[Brymus]

I like the way yours looks,will try it myself.
I think that John is right about the FR4 though as even my etch resist marker comes off with acetone.
But I havent tried it like you did yet so heres to it working.

[Gus]

Has anyone measured if the ink is conductive?

[davent]

Has anyone measured if the ink is conductive?

Tried painting  a board once, with high temperature black BBQ paint and it turned out to be conductive. Luckily thought to test it before i populated the board so was easy to remove it before it could cause problems.

There's a youtube video from Kat at Sonodrome and in that she uses isopropyl alcohol which is what i use to remove Sharpie when needed.

dave

[StereoKills]

I actually did a spot on my last board like this by accident a few weeks ago. If I had known it would look so good all over, I would have done so........maybe have to dig that board out again 

[bean]

Here's a couple more. Easy & fun! These were all done on CEM backing.

[markeebee]

Nice steer Peps, thanks!

I took a look at the Sonodrome site, and Kat also has a nice tutorial for etching, dying and tinning boards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frsDN7usyCs

I will doing all my boards like this in future, and not only because I'll do anything a cute blonde in rubber gloves tells me.

[peps1]

I will doing all my boards like this in future, and not only because I'll do anything a cute blonde in rubber gloves tells me.

[auden100]

Looks neat but I think it depends on the material of the boards you use.
I would imagine that FR-4 would not be as porous and would not take
the stained/dyed process...would wash off with acetone. I could be wrong.

I just tried this on the mini board I bought from Radio Shack, and the marker mostly rubbed off when I applied some isopropyl alcohol. It did, however, stick to the edges. A mild consolation.

[modsquad]

Two things, I highly doubt permanent marker is conductive given the ingredients.  I can believe BBQ would be because it has a "metallic" component to the ingredients due to its durability.   Some PCB boards are going to be more porous, that's why the edge of the Radio Shak board absorbed the ink.   Its coated with something that prevents it from being porous but when you cut the edge you break the "innerds" open.   

[dschwartz]

maybe if you rub the board with a steel whool it will become porous?