Basic Concept and Terminology in Circuit Card Assembly Service

A prototype printed circuit board or a prototype PCB is actually a board or plate that is used for the purpose of placing different elements for the purpose of conforming an electric circuit that contains electrical connection between the elements. The simplest type of prototype PCB assembly contains only interconnects or copper tracks interconnecting only a single surface of the board and are commonly known as single layer PCB.

Common circuit card assembly service now offer 2 layer PCBs – interconnecting both the surfaces of the board but depending upon the actual physical complexity of the PCB design layout printed circuit control boards can now be manufactured with 8 or even more layers and here are a few common terminology that is widely used in prototype PCB assembly nowadays.

Soldermask

During PCB manufacturing electrical components are mounted on the board either manually or with specialized equipments and machinery – solders are used for placing the components on board and for preventing accidental short circuit between two tracks belonging to two different nets – a varnish or soldermask is used by the manufacturers on both the sides of the board. Green is the color that is mostly used for the purpose of soldermasking while red and blue are also pretty common.

In electronic design automation software there is a rule specifying the distance that should exist between the soldermask border and the pad’s border of the prototype PCB.

Silkscreening or overlaying

This is the process of printing information on the soldermask conducive for facilitating the assembly process by the circuit card assembly service providers and manufacturers as well as for the purpose of verification and repairing. Basically it is done for the indicating the test points and also their positions, their orientations and also for referencing the electronic components those are also parts of the circuit. Depending upon the actual requirements of the designer silkscreening or overlaying can be used for other purposes too like printing the company name or configuration instructions as in old PC motherboards and this can actually be usd on both the surfaces of the board.

Layer stacking

As it is already mentioned here that a prototype PCB can actually be made of several layers and when designed with an EDA software it is not necessary that all those layers should correspond to the conductive material used on the boards. A PCB can actually have both nonconductive and conductive layers and in prototype PCB assembly and manufacturing the term layer refers to only conductive layers and the term CAD Layer is used when they refer to both conductive and non conductive type of layers.

Tracks

A track – refers to a copper track that is used for connecting two different points on a PCB and depending upon the amount of electricity that will be passing through dm the width of these tracks also vary. If you are looking for more information on circuit card assembly service contact Best Proto Inc or you can also visit their website BestProto.net.

About The Author

David Fischer is an Engineer and has a special interest in the world of circuit board. He is also a part of the lab testing teams in various companies. He loves to write and share his extensive knowledge & experience in this field. He highly recommends BestProto.net for building electromechanical and prototype PCB.