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Printed Circuit Board Watch Dials

Discussion area for watches, clocks and all other timekeepers.
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Sporkboy
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Printed Circuit Board Watch Dials

Post by Sporkboy »

I am looking for someone that has had custom PCBs printed before. I would like to try getting some dials printed through a fabrication house as I am thinking that this will enable me to get a new design out to people faster and at a pretty low cost. If you have done this before, please let me know as I am trying to figure out what artwork I need to make up so that I can get some dials made.

PCBs can be made in a variety of base colors, exposed copper and a generally white text for labels and such. Additionally, traces of copper can be etched below the base color of the board (I think this is called the solder mask). This will allow for some interesting textures to be explored. It also allows for the accurate drilling of holes, so that center hole isn't a problem. Areas that aren't covered by solder mask would have the bare copper exposed with paint all around. This might make a good place for lume (just a hunch). A generally white paint is also applied for board labeling, so that could be used for traditional dial markings. All kinds of things are possible here.

Anyway, this has been in the back of my mind for a while and it might be a good time to start thinking about it again since I have the digital design skills (more or less) to make the artwork. At this point, I am looking at this as a purely artistic medium and am not thinking about making a functioning electronics project here.

Below are some images that I found that may be interesting to you guys.

4AA32329-32E8-4150-8617-BFA139386A27.jpg
https://hackaday.com/2017/07/07/pcb-art ... apel-pins/
A pretty basic art project used to produce a small lapel pin using PCB art techniques.
Decko.png
https://www.tindie.com/products/termine ... ace-watch/
Decko digital watch. Seriously cool watch, but it is mostly defunct now and it has no crystal. Still, it's pretty cool.
Dial_SalvagedBoard.jpg
This is a salvaged board, which was cut down, lumed and then used as a dial. Close to the right idea, but I'd like to do all of the design stuff on the front end and save the labor of the actual making for the machines since that's what they are really good at.
led_binary_watch.jpg
VladsRoundWatch.jpg
https://hackaday.io/project/163887-vlad ... uch-almost
This last one the closest thing that I've found to appropriate inspiration. It has the traces hidden under the purple mask and white on top of that. It is an actual functioning piece of electronics, but I think that you guys get the idea of what I might be thinking about.

As far as I can tell, nobody has really started doing this in the watch modding community. Let me know what you think of this idea.
PetWatch
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Re: Printed Circuit Board Watch Dials

Post by PetWatch »

Great idea! Hope you can make it work. Some very cool and unusual designs may come out of this.

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Sporkboy
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Re: Printed Circuit Board Watch Dials

Post by Sporkboy »

I hope that I can make it work too. I've got some finishing up of the first batch of lumed dials to do, but I'm always looking to the next technical challenge.

I looked for color swatches of various PCBs and found some that you guys might enjoy.
colorswatchback_HackaDay.jpg
colorswatches_HackaDay.jpg
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