Obscenities on PCB silk screen - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: pepelevamp
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 04:49:36 pm
content: Hi guysOddly enough, its a serious question.Given that we can have anything we like printed on the board, I was wondering what people's thoughts were regarding obscenities on PCBs. Like say swear words, or drawings of naughty bits, etc.The thought came to mind because of all the various in-jokes people have put on PCBs throughout the years. Not all PCBs go out to customers - and surely there's gotta be a rude joke on a PCB somewhere out there.Finding obscenities in things is actually kinda fun. Try grepping a samsung phone's firmware for swear words. I found a few good ones.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 05:42:53 pm
content: Quote from: pepelevamp on June 13, 2017, 04:49:36 pmYes, if you are 12.

author: apelly
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 05:50:17 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 13, 2017, 05:42:53 pmOr, at least, no curmudgeon.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 05:58:44 pm
content: Quote from: apelly on June 13, 2017, 05:50:17 pmMaybe it's a New Zealanders' thing?

author: mc172
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 06:30:19 pm
content: A bloke I used to work with would replace the silk screen symbol of a particular RF transformer with an outline of Homer Simpson.

author: Len
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 06:38:50 pm
content: Quote from: apelly on June 13, 2017, 05:50:17 pmPutting things on a PCB that you know will be offensive to some people is, indeed, childish. It doesn't matter if you and your friends use the F-word all day long, the fact is that it offends many people and everyone knows that.When I'm writing code and I feel the need to insert an expletive in a comment (which happens pretty often) I use the comic-book version !&%#@. That gets the point across without being needlessly offensive.

author: mrpackethead
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 07:20:19 pm
content: Ive just done a pcb with a bible verse for a church's project.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 07:39:55 pm
content: Quote from: ataradov on June 13, 2017, 05:42:53 pmwhen you lose the last bit of inner 12 year old, it's all down hill

author: Daque
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 08:24:32 pm
content: when you lose the last bit of inner 12 year old, it's all down hillSo that's what happened to me.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 08:34:12 pm
content: There was this PCB, I ended up with some free space in the middle. I wrote there: "Dance floor"It is really not needed to be rude, or profane. If you want to insult someone (s), do it intelligently.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 09:18:05 pm
content: I liked the Tektronix figures in some of the service manual schematics. Back when fixing 5xx to 7xxx series. Think I saw or read a reference to them.For example, one of my manuals, a 545 maybe, there is a cleaning woman scrubbing the top of the CRT outline.Another was a race car smoking up the horizontal leads to the CRT.Another is a mountain climber up the side of the CRT.How about in my 70's Phase Linear amp and receiver service manuals.I don't remember it all, but in recommended repair tools: FM front end alignment: photo of a hammer.hammer.Humor not expected is fun.

author: pepelevamp
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 02:28:00 pm
content: Well I wouldn't dismiss things like this straight off & calling people childish and stuff. Thats not quite how being mature & growing up works.Finding stuff like this in products is indeedly fun because it breaks the curtain of professionalism and shows how people really are. Overt professionalism can be misrepresenting the nature of your own attitude to your products. Thats why its fun to find these things. Its little snippets of truth from behind the curtain.Anyway what I'm curious about is what the barriers would be for PCB manufacturers. If anyone knows of any instance where a PCB manufacturer has refused to print something on a silk screen.This kind of thing happens all the time in published media. Especially video games. Any publicly published thing of sufficient complexity where workers can hide things.

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 04:06:59 pm
content: Quote from: pepelevamp on June 15, 2017, 02:28:00 pmOK, if "obscene" is how you really are, indulge yourself...I agree that allowing a glimpse behind the "professionally correct" curtain can be entertaining. You mind find a joke, a hobby interest, or some other personal detail behind that curtain. "Obscenities" would not have been my first association.

author: pepelevamp
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 04:25:51 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on June 15, 2017, 04:06:59 pmYeah absolutely. I enjoy searching for anything that indicates a real human being. Jokes, notes about being confused about something - all sorts of things that show someone ain't perfect.I realized a while back now that searching for obscenities is just another one of those things. But its unique in that sure drawings & silly things aren't a problem for PCB manufacturers but I could figure swear words might be. Well I actually don't know. Hence why I'm asking hereI quite enjoy reading comments in source code. There's been some great lines deep within the source code of major things. John Carmack's had a few famous ones.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 04:52:10 pm
content: I see nothing amusing in this. If we are technology partners and you send me such product, be it a board , software /code, a document, etc, our relationships will end that day.

author: ovnr
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 05:08:09 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on June 15, 2017, 04:52:10 pmGood for you, I suppose. If that causes you to takethatmuch offense, I wouldn't want to deal with you either.Personally, I don't mind any level of obscenity. Randomly plastering "fuck" across a board is of course childish and dull, but something with a bit of wit - or frustration - behind it amuses me. Arrow to some over-complicated RF voodoo with a caption saying "This fucking shit took 50 revisions to get right, and now it only works if you scrub it with a goddamned toothbrush first!"? Totally fine. It's not massively professional, but if it's not prominently displayed, only a prude would care.

author: metrologist
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 05:17:54 pm
content: the Canucks seem to like it...https://www.etsy.com/listing/519921651/welders-ruler

author: bsudbrink
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 06:06:58 pm
content: Quote from: Len on June 13, 2017, 06:38:50 pmDon't do that, you'll confuse the perl programmers.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 02:03:28 am
content: Years ago I put a kind of octopus on a silkscreen...Now we have the NSA octopus.I did it first.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 03:11:19 am
content: Quote from: Bud on June 15, 2017, 04:52:10 pmyeah, enough is enough, haven't fetish people heard of mirrors and locked doors ?The only obscenities I want to see on a board are test points and component labelsA graphic of a **** or a **** isn't going to help me work out what's f*****

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 03:42:46 am
content: Quote from: ovnr on June 15, 2017, 05:08:09 pmGood for you that you do not want to deal with people that can not take you seriously.

author: X
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 04:12:09 am
content: Quote from: Len on June 13, 2017, 06:38:50 pmQuote from: Bud on June 15, 2017, 04:52:10 pmThe people who find words offensive (especially to the point where they want to replace them with nonsense) are childish and, from my experiences, often hypocritical. There's nothing wrong with being offensive. In fact, we need more offensive people in the world.Fun fact: in Australian courts of law, you cannot blank, alter, or replace "swear words" with nonsense, and you have to say the words in full as-is when giving testimony, otherwise the court can hold you for perjury for altering the evidence, and dismiss it.As a matter of fact, I would see this kind of behaviour as a strategy. If you put something that is guaranteed to offend the Chinese, they won't end up copying your product exactly, and you have a convenient way to tell between the copycats and genuine ones. On the other hand, you'd probably want to avoid ordering PCB runs from China if you do this.So go ahead and craft bits of traces, silk screens, solder masks, and even component layouts to make them as offensive as you possibly can, for asset protection.So long as you don't compromise RFI/EMI immunity, reliability, or other such aspects which are sensitive to component and trace layouts of course.There is a risk, which can be calculated based on how many customers are prissy enough to take offense to a couple of words, versus the number of the more sane non-offended type.

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 04:33:39 am
content: Quote from: metrologist on June 15, 2017, 05:17:54 pmI have both ruler models.Not far from Canaidia, maybe I should measure shells at my beach which is populated with Quebecians. See if a shell collector wants to borrow it.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 05:46:53 am
content: Quote from: X on June 16, 2017, 04:12:09 amcasually drawing dicks when trace lenght matching. i was 100% concentrated, i really couldn't see it before receiving the boards, bossSide note: i'm actually writing a firmware update for a device, i found out several comment lines of swearing. I totally forgot about that frustrating day... but now i see why i CAN'T do the thing i want to do in the easy way, because legacy compatibility

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 06:43:54 pm
content: I just came across a good example of witty comment that it totally acceptable, IMO. This is from Qt widget layout manager.Quote

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2017, 06:22:22 am
content: WTF did i just watch?

author: Fredderic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2017, 07:15:45 pm
content: Normally, I rarely ever swear, and generally have a fairly dim view of people who swear routinely — my mother taught me very good manners (spoken in my best posh British accent), in that regard at least. But on occasion I do swear, and on such occasions, people who know me well typically sit up and take note because coming from me, it actually means something. Most often, it's simple stress relief, in which I take it to an extreme, like saying with great conviction, "F#<K THE MOTHERF#<KING F#<K F#<KER"… or something along those lines, it really does depend on the circumstances.Now, I'm just getting back into messing with Electronics as a hobby after a 20 year sabbatical in paying-the-bills land, and I'm gearing up to run a version 2 of one of those simple little "make a blinking led in KiCad" tutorials, mostly just for practice, and since these cheap PCB makers like to send you at least a couple of anything you order, I figured it would also be a good opportunity to practice my soldering by making them all up. But then, what to do with 3 blinky LED boards...?Well, send them to people, of course! A perfectly useless flashing SMT LED on a little awesomely purple circuit board, laid out by yours truly… what better a gift to give!So now, this thread caught my eye... because for one particularly good friend of mine — who would be quite pleased that I've rekindled my interest in Electronics after so long — silk screening onto a version of the board just for them, a nice graphic penis accompanied with an assortment of not just one but several 4-letter words not typically spoken in civilised discourse, would absolutely make their day. Especially if said blinking LED happened to be positioned at an appropriately inappropriate spot in the graphic.If only I knew the PCB manufacturer did not employ any of those terminally curmudgeonous employees that appear to assume that the application of fowl language and/or crude graphic art in a design necessarily relates solely and directly to the maturity of the designer, rather than instead, you know, considering the possibility — however slight — that said PCB designer might actually be aware for whom they are designing the board.So… Dispensing for the time being with the discussion of the appropriateness or lack thereof of such things being present in a design, does anyone actually know whether the various PCB manufacturers are likely to care (or even notice), such things? I ask also, because of a netcast I was listening to just yesterday, featured someone high up the food chain of one of those PCB manufacturers, and the question came up regarding the potential privacy issues surrounding designs coming through, and it was noted that they really shouldn't be taking too much interest anyhow. I would assume they treat a PCB design much like a doctor treats your prostate; get in, make sure it's okay, get out, and move on to the next (and maybe laugh about it over dinner that night with the family — though hopefully not in the case of your doctor).

author: ovnr
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2017, 03:29:26 pm
content: Fredderic: If you go with a Chinese manufacturer, I doubt they'll raise a fuss - they don't seem terribly particular about anything that's not blatantly illegal in China. As for US-based manufacturers, who knows?

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 30, 2017, 11:18:19 pm
content: Quote from: Fredderic on June 19, 2017, 07:15:45 pmI think research has shown that people who more frequently swear are more honest. Beware of people with manners.http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/swear-wearing-honesty-lie-more-honest-facebook-psychology-cambride-university-maastricht-hong-kong-a7512601.html

author: Mattylad
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 31, 2017, 06:25:21 pm
content: I think there will just be a few sniggers and a "come here and look at this" at the fab front end station that gets to do it.Or you may still get your PCB but with it removed.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2017, 02:00:59 am
content: Quote from: Mattylad on July 31, 2017, 06:25:21 pmIf it does not break the law, business and standards of virtue should be kept separated.

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2017, 04:00:43 am
content: wow, people get wound up over the strangest thingsthis was an Easter egg in an old Tek manual

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2017, 05:25:25 am
content: What model and year scope is that? I have a few real Tektronix service manuals with similar sketches. Maybe in this thread.Maybe in this thread I mentioned I wanted to or heard of some post of the draftsman. Or the 1960's Wollensak tape recorder I grew up with had "go crap up a tree" faintly on the record label in the instructions on how to record off your record player.rambling

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2017, 05:37:01 am
content: http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Tektronix_Cartoons

author: jh15
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2017, 03:45:42 am
content: Thanks WastelandTek I have a couple Tek manuals of the within reach, bet you got them all.Back then, who could complain, not even the scope users, but the repairers. (me)

author: WastelandTek
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2017, 03:53:06 am
content: Quote from: jh15 on August 11, 2017, 03:45:42 amhardly

author: philpem
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 12:17:24 pm
content: I prefer hiding cute images on PCBs.One of mine has a dragon which a friend designed on the silkscreen. I'm thinking of asking them to redraw it with thicker lines and use it as a logo.I've got a few other ideas too... mostly related to PCB badges.Hey, if you've got a few square inches of empty routing space and need to add a thieving pattern.....Incidentally I made a Telegram sticker pack with the HP and Tek "schematic easter-eggs"... to preserve them for posterity. The cat touching the CRT HV line (and getting zapped) gets used a lot.......

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 01:39:19 pm
content: Quote from: philpem on September 20, 2017, 12:17:24 pmhttps://hackaday.com/2017/03/22/making-more-of-me-money/

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 20, 2017, 11:40:26 pm
content: Maxtor, at least I think it was Maxtor, did this on their hard drive controller boards for a while. Each series had a logo and name associated with it. I remember one with a drawing of an Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II.Quote from: jh15 on June 13, 2017, 09:18:05 pmEven better, all or most were puns or otherwise related to the associated circuit in some way.Quote from: WastelandTek on August 09, 2017, 05:37:01 amI uploaded the 7854 PUP (power up signal) one.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2017, 01:27:32 am
content: A friend was one of the people whose work went into a new kind of computer, with a very cool user interface so he and his other co workers all signed the PCB and you will find their names in there if you own one.