Materials & Process
A piece of the future, finished like an heirloom.
Every Suavius Atelier object starts as a drawing in our studio and ends in your hand as something quietly engineered. Here is how we make it, and what it is actually made of.
01
FR4 fiberglass.
FR4 is the substrate used in high-reliability electronics - satellites, medical devices, fine audio. It is a glass-fibre laminate bonded with epoxy resin, cured under pressure. It does not warp. It does not stain. It survives heat from a fresh espresso and the next decade of weekday mornings.
We chose it because a coaster is a small thing that lives a long life. The same substrate that holds a circuit together for twenty years should hold a cup for longer.
02
ENIG gold-plated copper.
The thin gold border on every PCB piece is not paint. It is the actual edge of the copper layer beneath, plated with electroless nickel and immersion gold (ENIG) - the same finish used on fine-pitch electronics where corrosion is not an option.
ENIG is more expensive than the alternatives (HASL, lead-based finishes, organic coatings). It also ages with grace: where a lacquered metal tarnishes within a year, an ENIG surface remains the colour you bought it on.
03
UV silkscreen print.
The artwork on each PCB piece is printed with multicolour UV-cured silkscreen, a process available in production-grade PCB fabrication only since 2024. The ink bonds to the resin surface and cures under ultraviolet light into a film that does not fade in sunlight and does not lift in dishwater.
We draw each design in our studio, refine the colour separations, and supply the artwork alongside the Gerber files our manufacturer uses to plate the copper. The two layers - graphic and metal - are laid down in separate passes and meet only on the finished board.
04
Hardwood & laser.
Our wooden pieces are cut from European hardwoods - oak, walnut, beech - and finished with food-safe linseed oil. Patterns are burned into the surface with a CO₂ laser. No ink. No lacquer. The grain shows through every mark, and the colour deepens with use rather than chipping away.
Wood is, in some respects, the opposite of FR4: it ages visibly. We think that is a feature.
Where it's made
Designed in Bielawa. Manufactured by people who do nothing else.
We design and finish every piece in our small studio in Bielawa, in the Lower Silesia region of Poland. Each PCB is fabricated by a specialist partner in Shenzhen - the city that has become the world's reference for precision board manufacturing - to the same tolerances as professional electronics.
We do not pretend to plate gold ourselves in a back room. We chose this workflow because it puts the right tools in the right hands: industrial metallurgy where it belongs, and design, finishing, packaging, and correspondence with you where they belong - here, in our atelier.
Wood pieces are cut and engraved entirely in-house.