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What is PCB

What is PCB?

What is PCB

What is PCB?

What is a PCB? PCB is the abbreviation of the printed circuit board(pcb board). In some countries,PCB is called PWB (printed wiring board). PCB comprises insulated baseboard, copper foil connecting wires, and bonding pads for electronic welding components. It has the dual functions of the conductive line and insulated baseboard. It can replace complex wiring to achieve circuit connection between components in the circuit.


It is the motherboard of electronic components.Before the advent of PCB, the interconnection between electronic components was done directly by wires. Nowadays, wires only exist in the laboratory for test applications.It has occupied a position of absolute control in the electronics industry.After electronic equipment adopts PCB, due to the consistency of similar PCBs, manual wiring errors can be avoided, and electronic components can be automatically DIP or SMT, automatic soldering, and automatic detection, ensuring the quality of electronic equipment and improving labor productivity. In addition, reduce costs and facilitate maintenance.


Printed Circuit Board(PCB)


what are pcb made of?The earliest used was a paper based copper clad printed circuit board. Since the emergence of semiconductor transistors in the 1950s, the demand for it has risen sharply. In particular, the rapid development and broad application of integrated circuits have made electronic equipment smaller and smaller, and circuit wiring density and difficulty were increasing, which requires continuous updating of PWB. At present, the variety of PCB has developed from single sided to double sided, multilayer, and flexible PCB.PCB structure and quality have also grown to ultra high density, miniaturization, and high reliability; new design methods and designs Supplies, PCB materials, and PCB manufacturing processes continue to emerge. Various computer aided design (CAD) PWB application software has been popularized and promoted in the PCB industry. Among professional PCB manufacturers, mechanized and automated production has highly replaced manual operations.


PCB manufacturing process

1. Material cutting, filleting, edge planing, cutting is the process of cutting the original PWB copper clad laminate into a work board that can be made on the production line, generally cutting into a work board of about 40*50cm.

2. VIA drilling, you need to use a CNC drill to drill through the VIA holes on the top and bottom layers of the PWB.

3. PCB through hole sinking copper, after drilling, the whole wall of the PCB material is free of copper, and the PCB surface needs to be dropped with a thin layer of copper using the sinking copper process.

4. For PWB electroplating, there is a thin copper layer on the copper impregnated PCB surface, which can not meet the requirement of 18um copper thickness at the bottom of IPC. Therefore, it needs to be electroplated to increase the consistency of the drill. The factory production standard of ipcb is 20-26um.

5. PCB lamination, a layer of the dry blue film is pressed on the PWB after lamination. The dry film is a carrier and is very important in the circuit process. Therefore, the dry film process is also named after it. Compared with wet film, the dry film has higher stability and better quality and can be directly used as non-metalized vias.

6. For circuit exposure, first align the circuit film with the PWB with the dry film pressed and then place it on the exposure machine for exposure. The dry film is exposed to the place where there is no circuit film under the energy of the lamp tube of the exposure machine. After the PWB circuit exposure process, the areas with circuits are not exposed, and those without circuits are disclosed.

7.The circuit is etched, and the copper that needs the course is left, and the copper is etched away with sulfuric acid where there is no need for copper.

8. Make a PCB solder mask by screen printing or coating solder mask ink, apply a layer of solder mask on the board surface to prevent short circuits during soldering, usually use green, blue, red, white, black solder mask.

9. PCB silkscreen, print the position number of the component and the silkscreen of the PWB model on the PWB, usually a white or black silkscreen.

10.PCB surface treatment, copper tends to exist in the form of oxide, It is prone to moisture oxidation when exposed to the air for a long time, and it is unlikely to remain as original copper for a long time, so surface treatment on the copper surface is required. The most basic purpose of surface treatment is to ensure good solderability or electrical properties.

11.PWB molding, punch the assembled work board PNL into SET or PCS that needs to be delivered through CNC or die, and the corresponding shape processing V Cut, chamfering, step groove, tapered hole, etc.

12. PCB test, use PWB flying probe test or general test electromechanical performance to check whether it has an open or short NG board. Sometimes, a PCB impedance test and a PWB high voltage test are necessary.

13. FQC final inspection, check the appearance, size, aperture, thickness, marking of PCB, etc, to meet customer needs. Then, ship qualified PWB in vacuum packaging.

PCB manufacturing process


The Function of and the Characteristics of the printed circuit board.

1.Assemblable. The printed circuit board provides support for fixing and assembling electronic components, wiring, and electrical connection or insulation between various electronic members of a printed circuit board and provides the required electrical characteristics. As a result, printed circuit board products can easily standardize the assembly of multiple components and can automate and scale the batch production of electronic products.

2. High reliability and provides the basis for automatic DIP and SMT.

3. Productive.When electronic devices use printed circuit boards, the consistency of the printed circuit board avoids errors in manual wiring. It can also realize automatic insertion or attachment of electronic components, automatic soldering, and automatic detection, ensuring the quality of electronic products, improving labor productivity, reducing costs, and facilitating maintenance.

4. Provide the required electrical, characteristic impedance, and electromagnetic compatibility for the circuit board in high speed or high frequency circuits.

5. Productive, and the circuit board embedded with passive components provides certain electrical functions, simplifies the electronic installation procedure, and improves the product's reliability.

6. High density and provides an effective chip carrier for miniaturized chip packaging of electronic components in large scale and ultra large scale electronic packaging components.


Providers of commonly used PWB design software include Altium, Cadence, Mentor, etc. Altium was formerly known as Protel, and the successively introduced Protel99SE, ProtelDXP, and AltiumDesigner (AD) are widely used. Other commonly used software includes pads, power PCB, MentorEE, allegro, CADENCE, Autocad, OrCAD, Zuken CadStart. Used for PCB manufacturing The software consists of Genesis2000, CAM350, C-CAM/V2000, Cits25/si6000/si8000 produced by Polar. iPCB uses PCB design software to transfer Gerber files and PWB manufacturing software for CAM processing.


PWB is widely used, including consumer electronics, automotive electronics, semiconductor packaging, network communications, medicine, aerospace, and other fields. From the perspective of PCB demand, currently driven by the rapid development of new energy vehicles, automotive electronics, The demand for PWB has grown substantially, and there is also a great demand for consumer electronics and semiconductor packaging.


PCB price calculation and PCB quotation

The price is composed of many factors

1. The different materials used to cause different prices

Take the ordinary double sided board as an example. The board materials generally include FR4, CEM3, etc. The PWB thickness varies from 0.6mm to 3.0mm, and the copper thickness varies from ½ Oz to 3 Oz. All of these are on the board. The above has caused a huge price difference; in terms of solder mask ink, there is also a distinct price difference between ordinary thermosetting oil and photosensitive green oil, so the difference in materials has caused the price diversity.


2. The price is different due to the difference in the production process used

Different production processes will cause additional costs. For example, gold plated pcb plate and tin-sprayed pcb plate, the production of gongs (milling) pcb plate and beer (punching) pcb plate,and the use of silk printed circuits and dry film circuits will result in different PCB costs, resulting in different prices.


3. PWB prices are different due to different PCB manufacturing difficulties

Even if the PWB material is the same and the process is the same,the difficulty of the PWB itself will cause different costs. For example, there are 1000 holes on two kinds of circuit boards. The hole diameter of one panel is more significant than 0.6mm, and the hole diameter of the other plate is smaller than 0.6mm, which will result in different drilling costs; for example, the two kinds of circuit boards are the same, but the line width and line spacing Different, one type is more significant than 0.2mm. One type is less than 0.2mm, which will also cause different production costs because the complex board has a higher scrap rate, which will inevitably increase the cost and drive the price diversity.


4. Different customer requirements will also cause different prices

The level of customer requirements will directly affect the production rate of the board factory. For example, a board according to IPC-A-600E, IPC class2 requires a 98% pass rate, but IPC class3 requirements may only have a 90% pass rate,thus causing blank circuit board factories Different costs ultimately lead to volatile product prices.


5. PCB prices are different due to different manufacturers

Different PCB manufacturers' process equipment and technical levels will result in other PWB costs even for the same product. Nowadays, many PCB manufacturers like to produce gold-plated PCBs because of the simple process and low cost. However,some manufacturers also have gold plated PCB. scrapping will increase, resulting in higher prices, so they prefer to produce tin-sprayed PWB, so their quotation for tin sprayed blank circuit board is lower than that of gold-plated PWB.


6. PCB price differences caused by different customer payment methods

At present, manufacturers generally adjust  prices according to other payment methods,ranging from 5% to 10%, which also causes price differences. You can visit IPCB, a circuit board factory.


7. PCB manufacturers are located in different regions, resulting in different prices

In terms of geographic location in China, the price is increasing from south to north, and there are specific differences in prices in different regions.Therefore,other areas also cause different PCB quotations.


How to calculate PCB quotation?

1. blank circuit board costs, different P costs, different PCB board  costs are additional.circuit board costs are additional.

1.1. circuit board material: FR-4, CEM-3, this is our standard double sided PWB and multilayer PWB plate, its price is also related to the thickness of the board and the thickness of copper and platinum in the middle of the board, and FR-I, CEM -1 These are our common PCB materials, and the price of this material is also very different from the above double sided PCB. Multilayer circuit  board.

1.2. It is the thickness of the PCB plate. Its thickness is commonly used:0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.4, 3.0, 3.4. The thickness and price of our conventional boards are not very different.

1.3. The thickness of copper and platinum will affect the price.The thickness of copper and platinum is generally divided into 18um, 2/1OZ, 35um, 1OZ, 70um, 2OZ, 105um, 3OZ, 140um, 4OZ, etc.

1.4. PCB raw material suppliers, standard and commonly used ones are Shengyi. KB. Isola, TUC, and so on.


2. PCB manufacturing process costs and the different process requirements of PCB board lead to varying difficulties in the PCB manufacturing process, and even PCB prices will vary.

2.1. It depends on the circuit on the PCB. For example, the price will be calculated separately if the wire density is thinner than 4/4mm.

2.2. There is also a BGA on the board so the cost will increase relatively, and in some places, the BGA is another one.

2.3. It depends on what the PCB surface treatment process is. Our common ones are lead-tin spraying, hot air leveling, OSP, environmental protection board, pure tin spraying, tin, silver, gold. Of course, surface technology is different. The price will be different too.

2.4. It also depends on the process standard; we commonly use the IPC2 level, but some customers require higher requirements, and the IPC3 level is required. Of course, the higher the middle, the higher the price.


3. Artificial water and electricity plus management costs. This cost depends on the cost control of each PCB factory.


4. PCB drilling costs, the number of holes, and the aperture size affect the drilling costs.


In the future, PCB will have a high wiring density, small size, and lightweight, conducive to the miniaturization of electronic equipment. Under the environment of accelerated penetration of emerging technologies such as 5G communications, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0, and the Internet of Things, the PCB industry, as an elemental force connecting the ups and downs in the entire electronic information manufacturing industry chain, will enter technology, New product cycle. 


The market demand for mid-to-high-end PCB products such as multilayer PCB, HDI PCB, flexible PCB, Rigid-Flex PCB, high-frequency PCB, high-speed PCB, and IC substrates continues to grow, the production equipment of PCB manufacturing companies also needs to be updated accordingly. PCB manufacturers upgrade automated printed circuit board manufacturing equipment to obtain Lower PCB manufacturing costs and better PCB circuit board quality. Now, do you know? What are PCB?


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