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Effects of permanent markers on Electronics Components

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nbjasani23

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Hi Everyone,

We are using permanent marker (Camlin Kokuyo black permanent marker) for hiding top marking of ICs.

Require suggestion that, is this solution reliable? and if yes what should be marker specification?

Thanks,
Nandish
 

Have you tried using any cleaning material to remove it?
White spirit is very good at cleaning it off of things, so your attempts at hiding chip details mat be pointless.

Now if it's ground off (rubbed down with fine grit paper) then that cannot be seen again.
 

nbjasani23 said:
We are using permanent marker (Camlin Kokuyo black permanent marker) for hiding top marking of ICs.h
Click to expand...

If your idea is hide the IC number and details, then it is pointless. Permanent marker is not that permanent when it comes of organic solvents.

You may need to use a dremel to rub off the markings- it is mostly useless- one can trace out the circuit and an intelligent guess can be made about the particular IC.
 

is this solution reliable?
Click to expand...
The use of a hard resin for immersing the whole assembly is a strategy that, taking the proper precautions for heat dissipation and avoid conductivity, this together with scraping of the surface of the components adds an extra degree of difficulty to those who wish to reverse engineer your product. At some point it would be necessary to completely destroy the equipment to check some detail not visible with the x-ray. When possible, the best thing to do is to use a programmable logic that covers the maximum possible of components; although it is possible to know which is the part number, it will not be possible to know what is inside.
 

Or if you are feeling really nasty, you could use an FPGA, but have it on battery backup with no FPGA bit stream on the board and no readback enabled. It gets programmed once at the factory, and from that point on is on either mains power or battery backup power. If the product is tampered with the battery backup is disabled and the FPGA configuration is lost (brick the unit). People who request that you fix/replace bricked units with good original batteries (soldered in ones :evil:) are by definition trying to steal your design. Only bricked units with worn out batteries are fixed and returned to customers.

Of course doing stuff like this might result in a loss of customers to your competition that doesn't try to be so protectionist.
 
The original poster has gone AWOL. Three-week-old single post and no reply, he may be gone for good.

However if he is still interested, I would check the marker's chemical data sheet and make sure it has no halogens.
 

schmitt trigger said:
...I would check the marker's chemical data sheet and make sure it has no halogens...
Click to expand...

Please forgive my ignorance but what is wrong with halogens? We consume lots of salt that contain lots of chloride- a halogen. Our salts (and other) are fortified with iodine- an essential element- is also a halogen. We also consume some amount of bromine- present in most soft drinks as BVO- brominated vegetable oils- not the most desirable compound but no body is complaining.

The PCB (I do not recall right now) also contains lots of chloride.
 

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