PCB gold finish instead of tinned surface ?

Other Hardware General Electronics
1

Adafruit use a gold finish on these boards Adafruit Perma-Proto Quarter-sized Breadboard PCB - Single : ID 1608 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits . This appears to be significantly more expensive than a tinned finish (at least based on the quote I obtained from Jlcpcb.com generic 100mm x 100mm board - ~$3 extra per board).

One thing I could imagine is that a standard jlcpcb quote assumes a worst case of 20 sq cm of gold surface and Adafruit get a special deal for a relatively sparse surface area.

Anyway, I am designing something similar, that is a prototyping strip board, mixing horizontal and vertical tracks, but with easy to cut tracks.
Are the benefits of gold significantly higher in this application ?

image
image603×701 73.7 KB

2

What I can remember.

  1. Silver is a better conductor than gold.
  2. Gold corrodes less than silver.
  3. (hard) gold is more wear resistant. So for something that is plugged/unplugged regularly gold would be advisable.

Based on that I would not use gold for your application.

1 Like
3

Some places don't charge extra for gold, like OSHpark and others.
The board you show has no solder mask or any kind of finish, it looks like just bare copper.

1 Like
4

OK. I didn't try shopping around but OSHpark seems generally more expensive than Chinese suppliers.

The board picture may look like bare copper but the manufacturer claims a gold finish (from the the link in the OP)

5

Only when you use the Chinese vendors standard offerings. If you want something different as I offen do then the price goes through the roof or there is no real price advantage over other vendors.

If you don't use gold then your only choice is HASL. Will JLCPCB do leaded solder?

6

As soon as you cut the track with gold plating, you have lost any benefit of gold plating!

7

It is the standard surface finish:

image
image1019×420 18.4 KB

12

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.