Up to the 1960s electronic parts were wired up point to point by hand soldering wires and components to tags and tag boards. This was extremely laborious and expensive. Quality was also poor because it depended entirely on the skill and attention of the assembler. It is true to say that all electronics back then were built entirely by hand. This is in stark contrast to today’s manufacturing whereby machinery plays a huge part.
An Alternative to Hand Wiring
PCBs became a popular alternative because they eliminated the need to hand wire connections. Wiring was achieved by etching copper laminate and the electronic components were mounted through holes in the laminate. This eliminated the possibility of wiring the wrong connection.
How the Printing Process Developed
Printing is a cheap reliable repetitive process. To start with, the holes were punched with a specialist punch tool that could cut all the holes in one cycle. However, the running cost of the tool was relatively high, so only long runs were economical.
Short runs could be drilled by hand using a ‘Uni-Drill’. The holes would be drilled one by one – the holes being positioned manually by a pin in a template. However, missing and wrong-sized holes were a common fault. CNC drill machines appeared in the late 1970s and solved this problem.
PCB Manufacture Today
Surface mounted parts have been designed for machine placement specifically on PCBs. The whole world of electronics relies on PCBs to mount and interconnect electronic parts. There is a huge supply chain of component manufacturers, machine makers, process suppliers, and software tools specifically targeted at the PCB manufacturer and assembler.
Modern Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing & Test
Modern production techniques now allow manufacture and test of PCBs almost entirely by machine with very high quality at low cost. PCBs are the only practical way to efficiently interconnect standard electronic components in the infinite variety of configurations that an engineers imagination can conjure. The PCB has been around for 50 odd years, and there is no obvious alternative on the horizon.
To order your own circuit boards, please see our website.
Philip King
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