Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

psyll.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#11

Post by cyberax »

blendergeek wrote: post #6

This is a tedious read that is mostly tangents from the headline. The question of “why copper?” is mostly about why not aluminum, silver, or gold. The article touches on aluminum but never bothers to answer why not silver/gold. This article has no central thesis and is instead a mishmash of random facts about electricity flow through circuit boards (often weirdly specific at that). Don't read this article hoping to f…

Gold is not great for bulk traces, it has worse conductivity (thermal and electric) than copper. It's used for coatings because of its corrosion resistance and its incredible ductility.

Silver would be better than copper, but the difference is not large (~8%) enough to justify the price differential.

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#12

Post by Skwid »

You can tell it's going to be a quality site when the article begins with a selection of PHP warnings. One link gave me a 410 which was a surprise, until I realised it returns 410 instead of 404 for every missing page.

Please don't invest any time in these articles, the whole site is a bizarre AI generated marketing scam

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#13

Post by consp »

Skwid wrote: post #12

You can tell it's going to be a quality site when the article begins with a selection of PHP warnings. One link gave me a 410 which was a surprise, until I realised it returns 410 instead of 404 for every missing page. Please don't invest any time in these articles, the whole site is a bizarre AI generated marketing scam

The images scream cheap cow manure product comparison "our product is better than lousy competition". And it reads like a bloated LLM digest.

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#15

Post by Skwid »

consp wrote: post #13
Skwid wrote: post #12

You can tell it's going to be a quality site when the article begins with a selection of PHP warnings. One link gave me a 410 which was a surprise, until I realised it returns 410 instead of 404 for every missing page. Please don't invest any time in these articles, the whole site is a bizarre AI generated marketing scam

The images scream cheap cow manure product comparison "our product is better than lousy competition". And it reads like a bloated LLM digest.

Curiously, I reverse searched a few of the alleged author's images and did get one exact match. On that site they were an Anonymous beauty blogger in a testimonials banner. That site also had a larger version of the same image with plenty of early stable diffusion style artifacts. Curious to know the process here, is it really easier to steal someone else’s slop than make your own these days?

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#16

Post by lucasfletcher »

Skwid wrote: post #15
consp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The images scream cheap cow manure product comparison "our product is better than lousy competition". And it reads like a bloated LLM digest.

Curiously, I reverse searched a few of the alleged author's images and did get one exact match. On that site they were an Anonymous beauty blogger in a testimonials banner. That site also had a larger version of the same image with plenty of early stable diffusion style artifacts. Curious to know the process here, is it really easier to steal someone else’s slop than make your own these days?

Can you prove it pls?

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#17

Post by Schlagbohrer »

cyberax wrote: post #11
blendergeek wrote: post #6

This is a tedious read that is mostly tangents from the headline. The question of “why copper?” is mostly about why not aluminum, silver, or gold. The article touches on aluminum but never bothers to answer why not silver/gold. This article has no central thesis and is instead a mishmash of random facts about electricity flow through circuit boards (often weirdly specific at that). Don't read this article hoping to f…

Gold is not great for bulk traces, it has worse conductivity (thermal and electric) than copper. It's used for coatings because of its corrosion resistance and its incredible ductility. Silver would be better than copper, but the difference is not large (~8%) enough to justify the price differential.

For those of us who appreciate PCBs as works of art, it never occurred to me that I could make a silver plated board just as a flex.

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#19

Post by jmclnx »

Fordec wrote: post #8

Money. Whether it's material cost, technological complexity or lower efficiency reasons, regardless, the reason is money.

Correct. Copper is relatively cheap, abundant an very easy to work with.

Gold is very easy to work with, but extremely expensive. I think if gold was as cheap and abundant as copper, it would be the go to metal due to corrosion problems other metals have.

Silver is also expensive and I think harder to work with then copper.

Aluminum, I would think it is harder to work with, but seems the article talks a lot about aluminum.

Harder to work with equates to costing more $ for manufacturing.

Re: Why copper still rules the motherboard trace

#20

Post by cyberax »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #17
cyberax wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is not great for bulk traces, it has worse conductivity (thermal and electric) than copper. It's used for coatings because of its corrosion resistance and its incredible ductility. Silver would be better than copper, but the difference is not large (~8%) enough to justify the price differential.

For those of us who appreciate PCBs as works of art, it never occurred to me that I could make a silver plated board just as a flex.

You totally can! But it'll just look like it's made out of aluminum :(
Post reply on HN