• As many of you know (I hope - else I'm not doing a very good job of advertising myself) I sell awesome circuit boards on Tindie ( https://www.tindie.com/stores/DrAzzy/ ) . They're great, and you all should totally buy some. And by some I mean lots.

    But anyway, I'm reordering the RN2483 boards, and I'm buying enough that it wouldn't cost me much more to go for ENIG (gold) surface treatment. I gather a lot of people like ENIG. I've never felt like it was any better to work with, though. So I'd like to ask the people of this forum which surface treatment you prefer. I'm mostly wondering if there's a sub-population of makers who dislike ENIG and would be less likely to buy a PCB with ENIG, as opposed to my normal surface treatment (lead-free HASL - where the copper on the board is pre-tinned with solder).

    So, I'd like to hear how people feel on this, particularly if you or anyone you know hates ENIG. :-P

    Also - how do people feel about black solder mask for simple breakout boards?
    The downside is that you don't see the traces as clearly, which is why I use yellow for a lot of boards (to make it easy to see where the traces go) - but for a simple breakout board like this, I'm not sure that matters, and ENIG gold pads on a black soldermask look pretty slick....

    Basically, I'm trying to figure out whether to reorder my RN2483 breakout boards in normal yellow + HASL, or black + ENIG (yellow + gold would be ugly I think...). The added expense would be small, but I'm wondering if there are people who would prefer the HASL surface treatment, and hence that using it might dissuade people from buying.

  • I'd be surprised if anyone didn't like ENIG? I don't think I ever really noticed it being much better to work with, but it feels like it's better quality.

    Also, low quality PCBs with pads that lift are more likely to be HASL, because they'll be cutting costs - so by avoiding HASL I guess you avoid that association.

    Black solder mask is nice too (especially if you can get it Matte black) - but then I'm biased!

    Interesting thought about the tracks - especially on smaller boards I find tracing tracks is a pain, and usually end up using a multimeter to check properly anyway. As long as you put PDFs of your schematic and circuit online I imagine folks wouldn't mind?

    What about blue? blue+gold could be nice, and the tracks are still more visible?

  • Mmmm - well, it's too late for blue and gold. I pulled the trigger on black and gold. At least it will look cool. The schematic is so dead simple, anyway - there's little need to peer at traces.

    I may do blue and gold next time.

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Do you like HASL or ENIG? What about black solder masks?

Posted by Avatar for DrAzzy @DrAzzy

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