Manufacturing Of Printed Circuit Boards

The manufacture of printed circuit boards involves prior design and assembly. The spread of electronics today has made it imperative to upscale printing circuit boards. Manufacturing processes depend on the kind of PCB one wants in the end. There are many kinds of PCBs that are manufactured depending on the complexity of design.

Based on the number of layers, the complexity of a circuit can be catered to. One sided circuit boards are the ones that are preferred for basic circuits. This type of PCB is the least complex. A double sided circuit board is the next step towards complicating a circuit. As the name suggests, both sides of the base are used for housing circuit components. More complex circuit boards are manufactured by using more layers of substrate. These layers are sandwiched together with an insulating material in between. Technology used for connecting components between the layers in this case is called through-hole technology. These layers can be up to 42 in number for extremely complicated circuits.

Circuit board manufacturing is also done based on board rigidity. A rigid board PCB is found in electronics with everyday use, such as computers, television sets, mobile phones, etc. These rigid boards will break if bent too much. That’s the reason they are called rigid boards. PCB manufacturing companies also produce flexible printed circuit boards. They’re flexible because instead of putting the components on a board, a thin film is used. This insulating material is flexible, which allows it to bent and curved in any shape without damaging the components housed on it. Such flexible circuit boards are used in medical equipment such as hearing aids.

Another kind of manufacturing feat in the area of PCBs is the combination of rigid and flexible types. These boards are almost exclusively used in sensitive applications like aerospace and military applications. It produces a very dense circuit whose complexity is often off the charts. You can picture typical espionage-class devices resulting from the use of this combination technology.

Manufacturing printed circuit boards involves a lot of measurement care. The product that is to make use of this PCB has pre-set dimensions that this PCB needs to stick to. Thickness of copper layer, length and width, hole diameter, etc. are some of the measurements the manufacturer needs to get right.

Before printed circuits were discovered, there used to be point to point construction of circuit. Holes were drilled for each wire of each component on the board. For complex circuits, this became a bit too much to handle. Printed circuit boards were discovered which eased the process of manufacturing complex circuits.

The evolution of electronic products has been revolutionary in the past decade or so. It was not very long ago that the world had its first mobile phone, and now we have entered an era of talking through "smartwatches". Everything employs printed circuit boards. It just depends on the design what purpose it serves or what function a device will carry.

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About The Author

James Whitehall is an expert when it comes to printed circuit board manufacturing and design. He loves writing interesting articles and blogs about the topic and recommends PCBCart.com as the name to trust if you are looking printed circuit board fabrication services and support.