PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD

Q. What are Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs)? Ans: Printed Circuit Boards are primarily an insulating material used as base, into which conductive strips are printed. The base material is generally fibre glass, and the conductive connections

are generally copper and are made through an etching process. The main PCB board is called the motherboard, the smaller attachment PCB boards are called daughter boards or daughter cards Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are by far the most common method of assembling modern electronic circuits. Comprised of a sandwich of one or more insulating layers and one or more copper layers which contain the signal traces and the powers and grounds, the design of the layout of printed circuit boards can be as demanding as the design of the electrical circuit. Most modern systems consist of multilayer boards of anywhere up to eight layers (or sometimes even more). Traditionally, components were mounted on the top layer in holes which extended through all layers. These are referred as through hole components. More recently, with the near universal adoption of surface mount components, you commonly find components mounted on both the top and the bottom layers. Q. What are the materials used in PCB? Ans. Conducting layers are typically made of thin copper foil. Insulating layers dielectric are typically laminated together with epoxy resin prepreg. The board is typically coated with a solder mask that is green in colour. Other colors that are normally available are blue, black, white and red. There are quite a few different dielectrics that can be chosen to provide different insulating values depending on the requirements of the circuit. Some of these dielectrics are polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon), FR-4, FR-1, CEM-1 or CEM-3. Well known prepreg materials used in the PCB industry are FR2 (Phenolic cotton paper), FR-3 (Cotton paper and epoxy), FR4 (Woven glass and epoxy), FR-5 (Woven glass and epoxy), FR-6 (Matte glass and polyester), G-10 (Woven glass and epoxy), CEM-1 (Cotton paper and epoxy), CEM-2 (Cotton paper and epoxy), CEM-3 (Non-woven glass and epoxy), CEM-4 (Woven glass and epoxy), CEM-5 (Woven glass and polyester). Thermal expansion is an important consideration especially with ball grid

array (BGA) and naked die technologies, and glass fibre offers the best dimensional stability. FR-4 is by far the most common material used today. The board with copper on it is called "copper-clad laminate". Q. What the different steps involved in designing a PCB? Ans: PCB board design defines the electrical pathways between components. It is derived from a schematic representation of the circuit. When it is derived, or imported from a schematic design, it translates the schematic symbols and libraries into physical components and connections. The main steps involved are: 1 Design the circuit 2 Place the components 3 Route the wires 1.Designing the Circuit. First the circuit diagram needs to be prepared. This can be done using softwares like Eagle or Express PCB. The vast majority of printed circuit boards are made by bonding a layer of copper over the entire substrate, sometimes on both sides, (creating a "blank PCB") then removing unwanted copper after applying a temporary mask (e.g., by etching), leaving only the desired copper traces. A few PCBs are made by adding traces to the bare substrate (or a substrate with a very thin layer of copper) usually by a complex process of multiple electroplating steps. The PCB manufacturing method primarily depends on whether it is for production volume or sample/prototype quantities. Double-sided boards or multi-layer boards use plated-through holes, called vias, to connect traces on either side of the substrate.

Top Metal Layer Most of the components reside on the top layer. Components are soldered to the pads on the top layer of PCB .

Bottom Metal Layer Few components are there on this layer. Traces are more in number. Most of the soldering is done on this layer. Various components used in PCBs: Jumpers: Often, many signal wires need to exist in too small of a space and must overlap. Running traces on different PCB layers is an option. But multilayer PCBs are often expensive. So we can use jumpers. Resistance: The resistors used in PCB are of very small in size and are having colour codes on them. They have two legs which are inserted in the holes at the connecting points. LEDs : LED stands for Light Emitting Diode. These are used as light sources. They also have two legs one cathode and the other anode. They are available in various colours. Number Panels: These are used to display numbers or alphabets to the user. They are used as an alpha-numeric output of the internal operations. Capacitors: They are used to store energy in the circuits. this also helps as timers because of the delay it takes to store the energy.

Christmas Lighting
Steps to prepare a Christmas Lighting. 1. Draw the rough circuit diagram manually 2. Drill holes in the breadboard according to the layout. 3. Apply copper in the hole barrels.

4. Using Eagle (software for CAD) develop the compact layout of the PCB. Print this layout on a paper. 5. Print this layout on the raw breadboard. 6. Keeping the traces, etch out the remaining solder using Etching machine. Mechanism used in Etching Machine
The vast majority of printed circuit boards are made by bonding a layer of copper over the entire substrate, sometimes on both sides, (creating a "blank PCB") then removing unwanted copper after applying a temporary mask (e.g., by etching), leaving only the desired copper traces. A few PCBs are made by adding traces to the bare substrate (or a substrate with a very thin layer of copper) usually by a complex process of multiple electroplating steps.

7. Place the components in their respective positions. Choose components of necessary size in this step. More compact the components are placed, more easily it could be handled. Also the point of short-circuit must be kept in mind. 8. Solder the components in the bottom side of the PCB. WARNING: THE TEMPERATURE OF THE SOLDERING ROD IS VERY HIGH. DO NOT TOUCH THE ROD.
9. Apply white letter marking on the PCB using screen printing

process. 10. Check whether the components are tightly placed or not. Also check whether there are any short-circuits in the PCB. If present then remove the soldering and solder again carefully. What did I learn from PCB workshop? In PCB workshop I learnt how to develop a PCB. And mainly how to manage the components in a small breadboard. Its really important how you choose the size of your components and place them well in a breadboard so that it is compact and at the same time it doesnt short-circuit. I also learnt about different types of breadboard used, how to read the layout and know about the specifications of the components to be used, how to

solder the components on the breadboard, and what to do if the circuit is short-circuited. In what way the PCBs can be used in future? PCBs make the huge electric circuits small and compact. This might be helpful to develop smaller electronics. This will lead to smaller and thinner mobiles, laptops, TVs, remotes, etc. The PCBs can even be attached with small solar panels and these can be used as mobile chargers. This will be very handy and could be used anywhere and everywhere. This will also reduce the manufacturing cost and also save electricity at the same time.