Can the color of a PCB board tell the quality?

Judging the quality of a PCB board from its color

First of all, as a printed circuit board, PCB mainly provides interconnections between electronic components. There is no direct relationship between color and performance, and different pigments do not affect electrical properties. The performance of a PCB board is determined by factors such as the materials used (high Q value), wiring design, and the number of layers of boards. However, in the process of washing PCBs, black is the most likely to cause color difference. If the raw materials and production processes used by the PCB factory are slightly deviated, the PCB defect rate will increase due to color difference. This directly leads to an increase in production costs.

In fact, the raw materials of PCBs are ubiquitous in our daily lives, that is, glass fiber and resin. Glass fiber is combined with resin and hardened to become a heat-insulating, insulating, and not easy to bend board, which is the PCB substrate. Of course, a PCB substrate made of glass fiber and resin alone cannot transmit signals, so on the PCB substrate, the manufacturer will cover the surface with a layer of copper, so the PCB substrate can also be called a copper-clad substrate.

Since the circuit traces of black PCB are difficult to identify, it will increase the difficulty of maintenance and debugging in the R&D and after-sales stages. Generally, if there is no RD (R&D) designer with profound skills and a strong maintenance team, the brand will not easily use black PCB. It can be said that the use of black PCB is a manifestation of a brand’s confidence in the RD design and post-maintenance team. From a side point of view, it is also a manifestation of the manufacturer’s confidence in its own strength.

Based on the above reasons, major manufacturers will carefully consider when choosing PCB board design for their products. Therefore, most of the products with large market shipments in that year used red PCB, green PCB or blue PCB, and black PCB was only seen in mid-to-high-end or top flagship products, so don’t think that black PCB is better than green PCB.