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Step 4Artwork
For my design, I placed my name and some instructions using the text tool in Eagle CAD.
The tStop and bStop layers in Eagle control the soldermask. Soldermask will not be present on the areas covered by tStop or bStop. The "t" and "b" mean "top" and "bottom. This fact can be used to your advantage.
Remember that areas with copper and soldermask will look light green, areas with no copper but with soldermask will look dark green, areas with no copper and with no soldermask will look sort of yellowish. Also remember that more light will go through if the bottom layer is uncovered.
Area with no soldermask but with copper will become tinned. This will be silver if you get your board tinned with regular tin or lead solder. If you want to spend more money, you can ask the PCB manufacture for gold plating instead.
On my own card, you can see that I've placed my own name in both the top copper layer and the tStop layer, thus creating the silver text effect by placing text under an area without any soldermask.
You can also ask the manufacture for other colours aside from green. Here is my friend's University of Waterloo PCB Ruler, created with black solder mask and gold plating (black and gold are my school's colours):
Here are some other possible PCB colour combinations:
Silk screen is the layer usually used for text, it goes over the soldermask. It is usually specified using the "tSilk" and "bSilk" layers in Eagle. It is important to remember that silk screen cannot exist without being on top of soldermask. You can usually ask the manufacture for a specific silk screen colour, the default is usually white silk screen with green soldermask.
Another neat trick is to import bitmap images as components so you can have bitmaps on your PCB, you can do this for any of the layers. Create a component in a library file, and then run the user script called "import-bmp". Save the library and add the component to your PCB.
The tStop and bStop layers in Eagle control the soldermask. Soldermask will not be present on the areas covered by tStop or bStop. The "t" and "b" mean "top" and "bottom. This fact can be used to your advantage.
Remember that areas with copper and soldermask will look light green, areas with no copper but with soldermask will look dark green, areas with no copper and with no soldermask will look sort of yellowish. Also remember that more light will go through if the bottom layer is uncovered.
Area with no soldermask but with copper will become tinned. This will be silver if you get your board tinned with regular tin or lead solder. If you want to spend more money, you can ask the PCB manufacture for gold plating instead.
On my own card, you can see that I've placed my own name in both the top copper layer and the tStop layer, thus creating the silver text effect by placing text under an area without any soldermask.
You can also ask the manufacture for other colours aside from green. Here is my friend's University of Waterloo PCB Ruler, created with black solder mask and gold plating (black and gold are my school's colours):
Here are some other possible PCB colour combinations:
Silk screen is the layer usually used for text, it goes over the soldermask. It is usually specified using the "tSilk" and "bSilk" layers in Eagle. It is important to remember that silk screen cannot exist without being on top of soldermask. You can usually ask the manufacture for a specific silk screen colour, the default is usually white silk screen with green soldermask.
Another neat trick is to import bitmap images as components so you can have bitmaps on your PCB, you can do this for any of the layers. Create a component in a library file, and then run the user script called "import-bmp". Save the library and add the component to your PCB.
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