The Pcb Color Wheel

When textbooks or documentaries portray the first working computers, they generally feature black and white photographs of room-sized devices that required loads of electricity and cost a fortune. These computers were only used for government or business purposes. The thought of a �personal computer� was ludicrous.

Computers Have Been Around Longer Than People Realize

The thing is electronic components had been around for quite some time. From Thomas Edison�s earliest labs and Nikola Tesla�s first tests, the train was set in motion for most of the modern technology people see today. In 1925, a man named Charles Ducas filed a patent for a device that featured an electrical path laid directly onto an insulated host surface. This was, essentially, the first circuit board design.

At the same time Ducas was tinkering, the inner workings of radios in Europe and the United States were being built on thin pieces of wood or Masonite. Point-to-point hand wiring made the devices crowded. However, the concept of the
free pcb design software was being put to use in professional and homemade settings.

In the 1940s, an Austrian by the name of Paul Eisler came up with the idea to involve an offset printer to directly lay conductive ink onto a board. Eisler created a small, handheld radio with his rudimentary circuit board. British armed forces refused Eisler�s pitch, but the United States bought into it immediately.

It wasn�t until shortly after WWII that PCBs really started to resemble anything on today�s market. During this time, drilled through-holes were introduced, allowing more precise and secure placement of components. Resins and durable materials like zinc and copper became available. Acid-resistant ink was used to print directly on the new materials. These are the advances that really allowed those first giant computing machines to be built.

In the 1970s, PCBs began to shrink in size as soldering techniques and methods were able to work at much more detailed levels. Finally, in the early 1990s, multi-layered boards came to market. These PC boards offered surface-mountable parts and components. Plus, developers could fit more connections to a multi-layered board. This allowed the overall size of printed circuit boards to start their ultimate miniaturization that people still see today in smartphones, paper-thin laptops and tablets, diminutive personal computers, capacitive touch screen in kitchen appliances, infotainment packages jammed into the small space of a sedan dashboard, and so on.

Computers Are Still Changing for the Better

Circuit board design is still not perfect. Some of the difficulties still facing developers and designers today include overheating, data transfer speeds, how to truly implement auto-routing, and creating PCBs able to withstand harsh environments or movements.

Perhaps the most powerful tool in the history and evolution of PCBs has been human innovation. The discovery of new materials and parts will happen. Someone will find a way to produce a self-sustaining computer. Someone else will find a way to shrink the PC down until it can fit anywhere or on anything. Eventually, PCBs might even be able to be implanted into humans to assist with degenerative brain diseases, mental health issues, or even to manage pain. That�s a far cry from floor-to-ceiling sized hard drives or wooden transistor radios.

Advances In Smt Pcb Assembly

From the late 1960s straight through the 1990s, it seemed that the unrelenting conquest of space – particularly by the United States but also by the Europeans, Russians and Japanese – was an immutable law of progress. But the race for more and more audacious space adventures seemed to lose steam in the 1990s. The space shuttle program seemed exciting for a while, and by bringing down the cost per ton to get materiel into earth orbit, it seemed that the space shuttle presaged dramatic advances in the colonization of space. But the space shuttle never did really lead to significant advances in space colonization, and then eventually, even that rather modest initiative ran out of steam.

Since the 2000s, the allure of space travel and colonization has seemed a bit moribund. But the new energy of tech billionaires, the increasing drive toward privatization, and the global spreading of wealth have all led to renewed enthusiasm all over the planet for bold new initiatives in space travel and colonization. The new head of the European Space Agency announced last year his enthusiasm for a moon colony. Placing a colony on the far side of the moon could yield tremendous research benefits, and the colony could also serve as a base for further exploration deeper into space. The US NASA Authorization Act of 2010 established the year 2030 as a goal for a manned mission to Mars. So the excitement would seem to be returning to the world of bold space travel.

As humans begin to plan ever more audacious space travel goals, designers of every element of travel and life in space are increasingly active in solving tomorrow’s problems today. One key problem is to solve the challenges of remote fabrication of all the essentials of life. If colonists or travelers in distant space should experience catastrophic equipment failure, they will need to be able to fabricate replacements on the spot, as tight weight and space limitations will generally prohibit bringing extensive supplies of backup equipment, and in many cases, resupply from earth will be impractical.

Fabricating Printed Circuit Boards in Zero Gravity

If life on earth is increasingly driven by electronic devices, imagine how it will be on Mars or a moon colony. Practically every conceivable life function–from oxygen supply, to radiation sensors to propulsion control–will be handled by computer-driven digital electronics. It can easily be anticipated that these electronics (and the printed circuit boards that drive them) will be complex enough that manual production (in zero gravity) will be impractical to say the least. Designers and engineers are already seriously at work experimenting with technologies that could allow replacement printed circuit board designs to be emailed through space to a remote outpost and then printed in zero gravity right there on the spot.

Made in Space (Designed in California)

The California company Made in Space has already begun work on its “3D Printing in Zero G Experiment.” Made in Space is developing a process of extrusion additive printed circuit board assemblies – a form of 3D printing – that can function properly in space using sturdy, robust equipment that requires minimal maintenance and can stand up to the physical shocks of space travel. The 3D printing process probably will be based on the use of a polymer material that can be built up layer by layer, even in a zero gravity environment. The 3D print system has been tested in NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program during a “zero-gravity simulating” parabolic flight in 2011. The system is currently undergoing further NASA certification and is scheduled to be transferred to the International Space Station on a US commercial resupply mission next year.

While the initial goals of the 3D print program are audacious enough, if the program has the anticipated success, then the ultimate goal is a system that can automatically fabricate not only extremely complicated printed circuit boards but entire devices and even complete habitats. Then, naturally, the next step would be for the fabrication equipment to be operated by robots. The first person to arrive at the Moon colony may only have to turn on the lights!

Printed Circuit Boards In Zero Gravity

With the increasing miniaturization of electronics, surface mount technology (SMT) PCB assembly has become practically the industry standard. From the 1950s straight through the 1980s, the typical industry standard for mounting components to circuit boards was through-hole technology. Using the through-hole technology, components are built with wire leads that are inserted through the board and soldered on the opposite side. The advantage of through-hole technology is that it is generally a physically stable connection which can be very useful for larger and heavier components. However, as the surface mount technology improved over the years, circuit board assemblers were able to get increasingly stable connections using increasingly short leads, then pins, then even flat contacts. In recent decades, there has been practically a symbiotic relationship between surface mount technology and electronics miniaturization; as the SMT has become better, additional miniaturization in consumer electronics has grown more feasible. And once consumer electronics designers began to see the possibilities to shrink size and weight, competitive pressures in the market have forced the use of SMT for many types of products.

Solder Balls and Pads

Currently, the lowest-profile connection technique used in surface mount technology is the use of solder balls or solder pads. In this method, leads and pins are dispensed with entirely, and the components are connected to the free pcb layout software board by means of tiny balls or pads of solder instead of leads or pins. In the SMT process, the circuit board first has the solder pads or balls applied at the correct connection locations by means of a silk printing process. Initially, the solder balls or pads are applied as a type of solder paste – sticky but not molten. The sticky viscosity of the solder paste holds the component in place until the application of heat melts the solder and completes the mechanical connection between the component and the circuit board. The component is very carefully aligned with the circuit board using a pick and place machine. Pick and place machines are robotic industrial assembly machines that are capable of high-speed, high-precision placement of electronic components onto the surface of the circuit board.

Reflow Soldering

Once the components are properly placed onto the surface of the circuit board, the board is then typically conveyed into a reflow oven where it is heated under tightly controlled tolerances. The purpose of the reflow oven is to melt the solder and to heat up the connecting surfaces of the components, all without overheating the circuit board, which could cause damage to the components and/or structural stress to the board. The reflow soldering technique is usually made up of four stages: preheating, a thermal soak, reflow, and a cooling phase. The purpose of the preheat is to bring the board up to the required temperature gradually. Heating too rapidly increases the risk of cracking the board or causing delamination. The thermal soak allows volatile compounds in the solder paste and the flux to “cook off.” By the end of the thermal soak phase, the entire circuit board and all components should have reached thermal equilibrium. The circuit board reaches its highest temperature during the reflow phase, and this is the point where the solder becomes molten and completes the mechanical and electrical connections with all of the components. The cooling zone allows the board gradually to return to ambient temperature–once again, in order to minimize the risk of thermal shock to the board.

SMT PCB assembly is a major step forward in the industry, and it continues to advance as consumer demand and competitive pressure forces the continuous miniaturization of electronics.

Cheap Pcb

Since the very beginning of the electronics industry, the drive to eliminate the “human element” has been unstoppable. From the perspective of an electronics engineer, humans are an extremely weak link in the chain. Humans make mistakes. They get distracted. They don’t see very well. Their hands shake and their breath contaminates surfaces. And in the brutal price competitive environment of today’s electronics industry, worst of all, humans are expensive. The more that printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication can be carried out entirely without the involvement of human beings, the better it is for everyone. However, until very recently, there have been things that only humans can do.

Most notably, computer-driven robots and materials handling equipment work great–until they don’t. When things start to go “off program,” computerized robots have traditionally been very poor at recognizing deviations and autonomously correcting errors. But with improved sensors and rapidly advancing artificial intelligence software controlling the equipment, even these applications for human involvement seem to be coming to an end.

Design Rules Check

Before any fabrication begins, most manufacturers now will check the requested design parameters to ensure that the designers have not made errors. The design rules check is a computerized, autonomous process that verifies that the requested layout does not have errors in the designated placement of components, errors in the routing of circuits, or other detectable flaws. The design rules check software has a standard constraints and rules matrix and checks the board design’s netlist and layout against the matrix, looking for exceptions. The computerized review checks for conflicting component placement, incorrect layering, unplanned or incorrectly planned pin placement, and insufficient clearances. Finally, the software checks the design against the limitations of the manufacturing equipment to ensure that the fabricator can properly manufacture the requested board using his equipment. If exceptions are noted, the board design is returned to the customer for corrections and/or redesign.

Automated Optical Inspection

Automated optical inspection of PCBs is a computerized quality control system in which a fabrication robot autonomously employs a digital camera to scan completed units, examining for failures and defects. Catastrophic failures like components that are entirely missing, and defects like skewed or incompletely soldered components can be automatically detected and the affected boards can be culled from the production run. Automated optical inspection can increase the throughput and lower costs, because properly calibrated cameras can inspect boards much faster than previous methods. Furthermore, automated optical inspection is a “touch-free” quality control technique, eliminating the risk of contamination. Automated optical inspection equipment can be installed at various steps in the fabrication process: inspecting the board itself, solder paste inspection, and inspection both before and after the board enters the solder reflow oven.

Electrical Testing

Finally, an acid test is functional testing that requires putting a current through it and testing the circuit. For large production runs, most fabricators use a testing fixture that is typically composed of a set of spring-loaded pins that pass through holes in a sheet of rigid plastic. The unit to be tested is properly aligned with the test fixture using tooling pins and is then lowered onto the charge pins, establishing contacting with the test points on the PCB under examination. Using this method, a very large number of test points can be simultaneously connected with the testing device. The testing device checks for short circuit board manufacturing companies, open circuits, and design exceptions. Most testing devices in common use can reduce defect rates to below .1%.

Automated quality control reduces costs while increasing quality. In today’s ultra-low tolerance circuit board market, automated quality control for virtually every manufacturing qualification is an absolute necessity.

Printed Circuit Board Design

In today’s fast-moving electronics industry, the range of industry participants and their needs and expectations has absolutely exploded. The open-source software movement is giving all sorts of regular people access to free software that can drive hardware to serve almost any conceivable use. Whether it’s home automation, sensors and motors, drones and accessories – the list of cheap or free projects for all sorts of electronics hobbyists just gets longer and longer. The combination of open-source software and the ready availability of advice and project notes over the Internet is causing an ever-wider range of enthusiasts to take on more and more complicated projects. The “next frontier” for a lot of these enthusiasts is to take their customization all the way down to the level of circuit board fabrication.

Not only is the hobbyist electronics industry changing fast, but the expectations of professionals in product development and even in academia are also evolving. Investors, analysts, and research project advisers increasingly want to see a working model of a project, not just read about it in a Powerpoint presentation. Fast, cheap and reasonably high-quality circuit board fabrication is bringing all of this within reach of practically everyone. But, of course, getting custom circuit boards for absolutely bottom dollar does require tradeoffs. For most people, these tradeoffs are well worth it.

In most areas of manufacturing, the old joke applies: “fast, cheap, good–pick two.” As with most technologies, circuit board fabrication development has begun with surmounting technical challenges at a very high per-unit cost and then improving the process in order to impose brutal cost controls–in other words, to maintain speed and quality but bring pricing steadily down. And in this regard, the circuit board fabrication industry has followed Moore’s Law for decades–the number of components that can be fit on the board has exploded, the throughput of boards during fabrication is faster than ever, and the fail rate for boards keeps dropping. But at the very bottom cost end of the industry, “something has to give.” There are now cheap PCB manufacturers that offer prices that would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago, like circuit boards in small production runs for as low as a dollar a board.

Project Planning Is Cost Estimating

When considering how much money to invest in the printed circuit assembly board fabrication for a specific project, it is vital first to think through the project demands all the way through the useful life of the device. How long does the device really need to remain functional? Will the device be exposed to thermal, humidity, or physical shock hazards? What kind of tolerances are required for the device to give the expected service? All of these questions and more are vital considerations when planning for PCB fabrication. After all, it is not really a cost savings to secure exceptionally cheap PCB fabrication and then find that the PCBs are not at all suitable for the intended use. For many people, the tradeoffs required to get inexpensive PCB fabrication are well worth it. But there are definitely pitfalls, including thermal stress during the fabrication process caused by less well-controlled temperatures during component soldering, mis-registration of the circuit board during silk screening, and quality of the components used.

Today’s inexpensive PCB fabrication is making all sorts of projects feasible now that would have been possible only for large and well-funded product developers in years past. With good planning, the use of less-expensive PCB fabricators can be of tremendous value.

Printed Circuit Board Design

As the market for consumer electronics moves into ever-smaller devices like “wearables,” the demand for flexible circuit boards can be expected to increase. The old industry standard of dimensionally stable printed circuit board design may well become the exception more than the rule in just a few short years. One key factor driving demand for flexible circuit boards (and the wearable devices that they can be used in) is the rapid innovation in means of interacting with electronics. The main limiting factor in electronics miniaturization is the human limitations of interaction. If our eyes require a screen and our hands require a keyboard to receive information from and send information to our devices, then they can only attain a limited degree of miniaturization.

As AI interface systems make screens and keyboards increasingly unnecessary, device hardware manufacturers are increasingly willing to push tech into aspects of our lives where it has never gone before, such as onto our wrists, incorporated in our clothing, or on paper. In other words, flexible surfaces are likely to be a very big part of the future of electronics devices. To make that happen, PCB manufacturers are going to have to develop the flexible technologies necessary to drive these flexible devices. The challenges of a flexible PCB go beyond merely fabricating a flexible board, although that in itself is a considerable challenge. If the board is not dimensionally stable, it becomes a lot more challenging to protect the components from physical shock and to maintain the continuity of the circuit.

Flexible Electronics

There are a number of new technologies that enable the creation of “flex circuits”, or flexible electronics. These techniques involve fixing electronic components to flexible, usually plastic, substrates. One common material used for this purpose is polyimide, which is a polymer-based material. While polyimide boards are bendable and twistable, when reinforced with graphite or glass-fiber, a polyimide board can also exhibit very low expansion and contraction with great tensile strength. Polyimide boards are also durable in temperature extremes and are not reactive to most solvents and oils. Another material commonly used for flex circuits is PEEK – polyether ether ketone, a translucent thermoplastic polymer. PEEK boards, while flexible, are structurally stable, chemically resistant, and thermally durable. PEEK can be made into circuit boards using either extrusion or injection molding techniques. Polyester is another material that is increasingly being used for the fabrication of flexible circuit board design. Using a silk screen printing process, fabricators can print silver circuits on the surface of the polyester.

Flexible Electronic Components

The demand for flexible devices is driving all sorts of exciting innovation. One technique of great promise is in the area of “flexible and circuit board manufacturing companies electronics” – FPE. Using a grapheme oxide “ink,” circuits and components can be printed onto polyester, polyimide, and other flexible surfaces to make ultra-miniaturized, flexible, and sturdy circuit boards. Graphene is a hex-shaped latticework microstructure that is one atom thick. The grapheme material has great electrical connectivity, and new technologies also allow printing using very simple, modified ink jet printers, making fabrication cheaper and more accessible than ever.

Cheap Pcb

With the increasing miniaturization of electronics, surface mount technology (SMT) PCB assembly has become practically the industry standard. From the 1950s straight through the 1980s, the typical industry standard for mounting components to circuit boards was through-hole technology. Using the through-hole technology, components are built with wire leads that are inserted through the board and soldered on the opposite side. The advantage of through-hole technology is that it is generally a physically stable connection which can be very useful for larger and heavier components. However, as the surface mount technology improved over the years, circuit board assemblers were able to get increasingly stable connections using increasingly short leads, then pins, then even flat contacts. In recent decades, there has been practically a symbiotic relationship between surface mount technology and electronics miniaturization; as the SMT has become better, additional miniaturization in consumer electronics has grown more feasible. And once consumer electronics designers began to see the possibilities to shrink size and weight, competitive pressures in the market have forced the use of SMT for many types of products.

Solder Balls and Pads

Currently, the lowest-profile connection technique used in surface mount technology is the use of solder balls or solder pads. In this method, leads and pins are dispensed with entirely, and the components are connected to the circuit board by means of tiny balls or pads of solder instead of leads or pins. In the SMT process, the circuit board first has the solder pads or balls applied at the correct connection locations by means of a silk printing process. Initially, the solder balls or pads are applied as a type of solder paste – sticky but not molten. The sticky viscosity of the solder paste holds the component in place until the application of heat melts the solder and completes the mechanical connection between the component and the circuit board. The component is very carefully aligned with the circuit board using a pick and place machine. Pick and place machines are robotic industrial assembly machines that are capable of high-speed, high-precision placement of electronic components onto the surface of the circuit board.

Reflow Soldering

Once the components are properly placed onto the surface of the printed circuit assembly board, the board is then typically conveyed into a reflow oven where it is heated under tightly controlled tolerances. The purpose of the reflow oven is to melt the solder and to heat up the connecting surfaces of the components, all without overheating the circuit board, which could cause damage to the components and/or structural stress to the board. The reflow soldering technique is usually made up of four stages: preheating, a thermal soak, reflow, and a cooling phase. The purpose of the preheat is to bring the board up to the required temperature gradually. Heating too rapidly increases the risk of cracking the board or causing delamination. The thermal soak allows volatile compounds in the solder paste and the flux to “cook off.” By the end of the thermal soak phase, the entire circuit board and all components should have reached thermal equilibrium. The circuit board reaches its highest temperature during the reflow phase, and this is the point where the solder becomes molten and completes the mechanical and electrical connections with all of the components. The cooling zone allows the board gradually to return to ambient temperature–once again, in order to minimize the risk of thermal shock to the board.

SMT PCB assembly is a major step forward in the industry, and it continues to advance as consumer demand and competitive pressure forces the continuous miniaturization of electronics.

Automated Quality Control Of Printed Circuit Boards

From the late 1960s straight through the 1990s, it seemed that the unrelenting conquest of space – particularly by the United States but also by the Europeans, Russians and Japanese – was an immutable law of progress. But the race for more and more audacious space adventures seemed to lose steam in the 1990s. The space shuttle program seemed exciting for a while, and by bringing down the cost per ton to get materiel into earth orbit, it seemed that the space shuttle presaged dramatic advances in the colonization of space. But the space shuttle never did really lead to significant advances in space colonization, and then eventually, even that rather modest initiative ran out of steam.

Since the 2000s, the allure of space travel and colonization has seemed a bit moribund. But the new energy of tech billionaires, the increasing drive toward privatization, and the global spreading of wealth have all led to renewed enthusiasm all over the planet for bold new initiatives in space travel and colonization. The new head of the European Space Agency announced last year his enthusiasm for a moon colony. Placing a colony on the far side of the moon could yield tremendous research benefits, and the colony could also serve as a base for further exploration deeper into space. The US NASA Authorization Act of 2010 established the year 2030 as a goal for a manned mission to Mars. So the excitement would seem to be returning to the world of bold space travel.

As humans begin to plan ever more audacious space travel goals, designers of every element of travel and life in space are increasingly active in solving tomorrow’s problems today. One key problem is to solve the challenges of remote fabrication of all the essentials of life. If colonists or travelers in distant space should experience catastrophic equipment failure, they will need to be able to fabricate replacements on the spot, as tight weight and space limitations will generally prohibit bringing extensive supplies of backup equipment, and in many cases, resupply from earth will be impractical.

Fabricating Printed Circuit Boards in Zero Gravity

If life on earth is increasingly driven by electronic devices, imagine how it will be on Mars or a moon colony. Practically every conceivable life function–from oxygen supply, to radiation sensors to propulsion control–will be handled by computer-driven digital electronics. It can easily be anticipated that these electronics (and the circuit board companies that drive them) will be complex enough that manual production (in zero gravity) will be impractical to say the least. Designers and engineers are already seriously at work experimenting with technologies that could allow replacement printed circuit board designs to be emailed through space to a remote outpost and then printed in zero gravity right there on the spot.

Made in Space (Designed in California)

The California company Made in Space has already begun work on its “3D Printing in Zero G Experiment.” Made in Space is developing a process of extrusion additive manufacturing – a form of 3D printing – that can function properly in space using sturdy, robust equipment that requires minimal maintenance and can stand up to the physical shocks of space travel. The 3D printing process probably will be based on the use of a polymer material that can be built up layer by layer, even in a zero gravity environment. The 3D print system has been tested in NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program during a “zero-gravity simulating” parabolic flight in 2011. The system is currently undergoing further NASA certification and is scheduled to be transferred to the International Space Station on a US commercial resupply mission next year.

While the initial goals of the 3D print program are audacious enough, if the program has the anticipated success, then the ultimate goal is a system that can automatically fabricate not only extremely complicated printed circuit boards but entire devices and even complete habitats. Then, naturally, the next step would be for the fabrication equipment to be operated by robots. The first person to arrive at the Moon colony may only have to turn on the lights!

Cheap Pcb

With the increasing miniaturization of electronics, surface mount technology (SMT) PCB assembly has become practically the industry standard. From the 1950s straight through the 1980s, the typical industry standard for mounting components to circuit boards was through-hole technology. Using the through-hole technology, components are built with wire leads that are inserted through the board and soldered on the opposite side. The advantage of through-hole technology is that it is generally a physically stable connection which can be very useful for larger and heavier components. However, as the surface mount technology improved over the years, circuit board assemblers were able to get increasingly stable connections using increasingly short leads, then pins, then even flat contacts. In recent decades, there has been practically a symbiotic relationship between surface mount technology and electronics miniaturization; as the SMT has become better, additional miniaturization in consumer electronics has grown more feasible. And once consumer electronics designers began to see the possibilities to shrink size and weight, competitive pressures in the market have forced the use of SMT for many types of products.

Solder Balls and Pads

Currently, the lowest-profile connection technique used in surface mount technology is the use of solder balls or solder pads. In this method, leads and pins are dispensed with entirely, and the components are connected to the circuit board by means of tiny balls or pads of solder instead of leads or pins. In the SMT process, the circuit board first has the solder pads or balls applied at the correct connection locations by means of a silk printing process. Initially, the solder balls or pads are applied as a type of solder paste – sticky but not molten. The sticky viscosity of the solder paste holds the component in place until the application of heat melts the solder and completes the mechanical connection between the component and the circuit board. The component is very carefully aligned with the circuit board using a pick and place machine. Pick and place machines are robotic industrial assembly machines that are capable of high-speed, high-precision placement of electronic components onto the surface of the pcb manufacturer board.

Reflow Soldering

Once the components are properly placed onto the surface of the circuit board, the board is then typically conveyed into a reflow oven where it is heated under tightly controlled tolerances. The purpose of the reflow oven is to melt the solder and to heat up the connecting surfaces of the components, all without overheating the circuit board, which could cause damage to the components and/or structural stress to the board. The reflow soldering technique is usually made up of four stages: preheating, a thermal soak, reflow, and a cooling phase. The purpose of the preheat is to bring the board up to the required temperature gradually. Heating too rapidly increases the risk of cracking the board or causing delamination. The thermal soak allows volatile compounds in the solder paste and the flux to “cook off.” By the end of the thermal soak phase, the entire circuit board and all components should have reached thermal equilibrium. The circuit board reaches its highest temperature during the reflow phase, and this is the point where the solder becomes molten and completes the mechanical and electrical connections with all of the components. The cooling zone allows the board gradually to return to ambient temperature–once again, in order to minimize the risk of thermal shock to the board.

SMT PCB assembly is a major step forward in the industry, and it continues to advance as consumer demand and competitive pressure forces the continuous miniaturization of electronics.

Many Typical Reasons For Printed Circuit Board Failures

Long before it ever accesses the Internet or zings emails across the Web, a computer’s brain must be designed and built. Starting from the beginning, there is a circuit board, which can be broken down in to much smaller pieces. The first is a layer of a non-conductive material. Usually this level is crafted from glass-reinforced epoxy, known as FR-4. It is flame resistant, inexpensive, and has extremely low conductivity. This layer is then laminated with copper (or another metal), creating a conductive surface.

The Layers of a Circuit Board

After the FR-4 and copper laminate, the rest of the pcb manufacturing board can be constructed. A less-expensive circuit board is single sided, meaning a single base layer with metal sheeting only on one side. These single-sided boards are easier to work with, and it’s how most hobbyists prefer to start. Although they can be easier to manufacture and understand, they can be more trying to design, as there’s only one plane to work with, and there can be no crossed connections without external jumpers.

Double-sided boards are more expensive, but come with the ability to expand designs, and create a complex circuit board. A double-sided board allows creators to cross electrical circuits without external jumpers. It’s also much more cost effective and reduces the amount of design work and tedious drawing and redrawing. More room simply means more space to lay out the connections needed.

As designs become more and more complex, it’s necessary to have more layers to the board. These models are usually reserved for extremely complex models with a large number of signal paths or if the designers is aiming for an incredibly compact circuit board.

Copper traces are the most important part of a design and are created by removing the conductive copper laminate from the non-conductive material beneath. This creates negative space around the trace, which is the remaining copper laminate.

The last important component to a circuit board is the via. They are used in multi-layer boards to connect one board to another. There are three types of vias, including:

* Through hole—The most common type of via, where a hole is drilled up through the entire board and then electroplated so that it is conductive.

* Blind—A blind via is used in complex designs with two or more layers to connect a surface layer to the next layer without going through all the layers.

* Buried—Buried vias are similar to blind vias but only connect internal layers.

Creating a Circuit Board

Whether for a new computer built from a kit or inside the latest smartphone, a circuit board is a necessary step in creating the brain of an electronic. Crafted from fairly simple materials, these innovative creations are becoming easier to design, faster at processing, and more fun to create. For the home enthusiast or high-production companies, understanding the layers and materials of a circuit board will make design and manufacturing that much easier.