How much do you know about PCB or Printed Circuit Board?

Have you ever heard the term PCB, or integrated circuit board? If you do not know what it is, we will explain it to you in this article. While reading this article, you are surrounded by PCBs; You have several on your PC, monitor, mouse and also on your mobile. Every electronic element is built using a PCB. Click here for high density interconnect pcb.

The use of PCBs was a giant step in the evolution of electronic devices, as it provided an innovative method for connecting elements without using electrical cables. The current world would not be the same without the invention of PCBs. Visit this site for flex pcb manufacturing.

What is a PCB?

How To Make Your Own Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) - YouTube

PCB stands for Printed Circuit Board, not to confuse it for example with the PCI slots of our PC.

Well, a PCB is basically a physical medium where electronic and electrical components are installed and interconnected between them. These components can be chips, capacitors, diodes, resistors, connectors, etc. If you take a look at a computer inside, you will see that there are multiple flat plates with a lot of components attached to it, it is a motherboard and it is composed of a PCB and the components we have cited.

To connect each element to a PCB, we use a series of extremely thin copper conductive tracks that generate a rail, conductor, as if it were a cable. In the simplest circuits, we only have conductive tracks on one side or both visible on the PCB, but in more complete ones we have electric tracks and even components stacked in multiple layers of them.

flex pcb manufacturing

What is inside a PCB?

Printed circuits are composed of a series of conductive layers, at least the most complex. Each of these conductive layers is separated by an insulating material called a substrate. Holes of different layers are used to connect holes called tracks that can completely cross the PCB or only reach a certain depth.

The substrate can be of different compositions, but always of non-conductive materials so that each of the electric tracks carry their own signal and voltage.

The electronic components on the other hand, will almost always go in the external zone of the PCBs, and installed on both sides, to take full advantage of their extension. Before creating the electric tracks, the different layers of the PCB are only formed by the substrate and some very thin sheets of copper or other conductive material, and it will be through a machine similar to a printer as they will be created and through a quite a process Long and complex.

PCB design using software

It all starts with the design of the PCB, tracing the electrical tracks necessary to connect the components, as well as listing how many layers are going to be necessary to be able to generate all the connections that are going to be necessary for the components.This process is performed using CAM computer software such as TinyCAD or DesignSpark.


Leave a Reply
