How to design a PCB for 50-100 years?

Question

Let&rsquo;s say you want to do 50-100 years of constant operation indoors.I&rsquo;m trying to design a PCB to last, and there&rsquo;s very little information publicly available. There&rsquo;s the obvious - no electrolytic caps, no pure tin, sure - but beyond that, what would you do?

pickle-wizard · Accepted Answer

One suggestion I have is to make the components as simple and generic as possible so they will still be available to repair it in the future. Getting a working ASIC in 50 years may be near impossible, but through hole resistors, caps, and 7400 series logic chips will still be easy to find.Also think this question would be good for retro computing groups. They can tell you what their common failures are so you could avoid them.

Salmonfisher11 · Answer

100 years in a 100% controlled environment is easy.
Meaning: you are missing a lot of variables in your game that will mess with your plans.
So spend some times and do requirements engineering on an abstract level. Then select the techniques to solve them.

owenversteeg · Answer

One thing I&rsquo;ve heard repeated all over the internet is that NASA has great studies and guides on electronics longevity, but I can&rsquo;t seem to find much online and most of what I find is about radiation, temperature or motion hardening which isn&rsquo;t as relevant on Earth. If anyone has specific links I&rsquo;d love to read them.

How to design a PCB for 50-100 years?

Let’s say you want to do 50-100 years of constant operation indoors.I’m trying to design a PCB to last, and there’s very little information publicly available. There’s the obvious - no electrolytic caps, no pure tin, sure - but beyond that, what would you do?

100 years in a 100% controlled environment is easy.Meaning: you are missing a lot of variables in your game that will mess with your plans.So spend some times and do requirements engineering on an abstract level. Then select the techniques to solve them.

Let’s say you want to do 50-100 years of constant operation indoors.
I’m trying to design a PCB to last, and there’s very little information publicly available. There’s the obvious - no electrolytic caps, no pure tin, sure - but beyond that, what would you do?

100 years in a 100% controlled environment is easy.
Meaning: you are missing a lot of variables in your game that will mess with your plans.
So spend some times and do requirements engineering on an abstract level. Then select the techniques to solve them.