Fast PCB Fabrication Technology - History and Recent Advancements

Fast PCB Fabrication Technology – History and Recent Advancements

Go back to 1947 and open up one of those vintage television sets. It’s a complicated mess of huge electrical components interconnected by an equally complex network of wires. A few years down the lane, semiconductors started flooding the market, and cookie-shaped chips began replacing vacuum tubes and relays. However, interconnections were still in practice with wires. Just then, fast PCB fabrication technology came into existence and everything started shrinking in size.

Room-sized computers shrunk to 7-inch tablets, desktop telephones reduced to multi-functioning smartphones. All made possible by PCB fabrication. Even television sets got rid of its large cathode ray tubes and now combine LEDs controlled by components placed on PCBs.

Fast PCB fabrication – an introduction

Semiconductor technology started the diminishing process. Resistances were no more thin copper wires mounted on a thick cylinder. It also paved the way for fabricating millions of transistors along with its interconnections on a single chip. However, such processors need connections with memory elements which together should pair-up with input-output ports.

Printed circuit boards or PCBs provided the solution. Instead of complicated wiring techniques, PCBs came with printed slots to provide such connections among various electrical components. PCB manufacturer makes use layers of fibreglass and copper and tops it up with a solder mask.

Aren’t simple copper wires cheaper?

It may seem so, but the benefits of PCBs surpass this cost-effective part.

  • Simple wiring makes things complex. Even if it is machine made, forming connections and later debugging it, is way more time consuming and hectic.
  • Also, the use of simple wires can always lead to insulation degradation resulting in short-circuiting. Imagine finding such a fault on a modern day computer’s motherboard.
  • A significant amount of PCBs with similar wiring slots can be produced in a small period. This enhances the cost-effective factor to some extent.

Hence, what PCB manufacturers do is, fabricate multiple PCBs with similar slots and add components at their designated place. If one component is not there, that connection will remain open. The best part is that this business is also possible at ground level with minimum investment. All you need is to have some sort of knowledge and familiarity with the technology and a handful of experts with similar kind of knowledge.

PCBs make way for High-Density Interconnect (HDI) technology

Do modern-day computers run on a single PCB? It requires layers of interconnections and often provides slots to add that additional RAM or graphics card. In case of supercomputers that get upgraded on a daily basis, things get more complex.

High-Density Interconnect (HDI) technology comes with multiple layers of copper on the PCB’s fibreglass base. Each component reaches out to these layers, and various complicated interconnects placed in series. Even, slots are there for connecting one or more circuit boards to the present one. Hence, simple drilling of the motherboard to add a heat sink may render the whole product useless.

The quick and further development in the use of this incredible technology has helped many business entrepreneurs to come out with new ideas and to create some incredible devices. If you are also one of them, all you need is to look out for, “storage units near me” to set up your own workstation to work in an efficient manner.

As much as 16 layers exist in a modern day, PCB and printing can exist on both sides. Only a professional, fast PCB fabrication company even at ground level with all the latest technology can reach such quality limits and provide the best-in-class circuit boards. Circuit components may be reaching new heights with ever-increasing demands for technology development; the same pace must follow the simple, yet powerful PCBs.

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