Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) hold great importance in making electronic and mechanical devices and equipment for both domestic as well as industrial use. From health care to banking, you will find a printed circuit board in the equipment at use. However, that wasn’t always the case. The PCBs only became common in the late 1970s.
Before that, manufacturers had to use hand-made circuits with wires, leads, connectors, and whatnot. These hand-made circuit boards were good, but as the equipment and devices got more and more advanced, the circuit boards got more and more complex, to the point that making them manually got too difficult.
This paved the way for PCB manufacturing services, where companies would order customized printed circuit boards, and manufacturers will make those printed circuit boards for one specific use. The market of PCBs has expanded so much that now different companies provide different services. You can employ PCB design and manufacturing services from one company and use PCB assembly services from another.
In this article, we will take a look at why PCBs have become so essential in recent times. What are the advantages of using printed circuit boards? So, let’s get into it.
Reliability:
The biggest advantage and one of the biggest aspects the increases the importance of printed circuit boards is their reliability that the hand-made circuit boards lacked. A printed circuit board has a much lower chance of malfunction mid-use in comparison to a manually connected traditional circuit board. The reliability is why the biggest industries of the world, like Aerospace and Military, are the biggest consumers of PCBs.
Compact Build:
A few years back, every leading smartphone brand was at war with each other as to who will make the thinnest mobile phone. In those years, we saw some extremely thin smartphones. And when you compare the mobile phones of today with the mobile phones from 20 years ago, the most obvious difference is the size.
All this was possible because of printed circuit boards and their compact build and design. With these printed circuit boards at work, the overall size of any device reduces significantly. Most PCBs are 1.5mm thick. This allows manufacturers to fit a lot of components without compromising the interconnectivity and the overall design of the device.
Another great example of the compact build of PCBs is the medical equipment. Thanks to the compact PCBs, the big and bulky medical machines have become smaller and lighter.
Ease Of Repairing:
The biggest problem with the older circuit boards was that if there was a connection malfunction, these boards would become almost useless because they were too difficult to repair. Even locating the malfunction was a cumbersome task, let alone repairing it afterward. The printed circuit boards, on the other hand, are a different story.
On any given PCB, there are clear labels, instructions, and guidelines on how to diagnose any problem and how to fix that problem. Because there are no extra mounted components on a printed circuit board, you can easily navigate through the circuit board and for easy repairs without fear of damaging something else.
Conclusion:
There are plenty of other advantages of printed circuit boards, but these three adequately highlight the importance of printed circuit boards. The PCBs have had a lot of impact on our daily lives, and we don’t even realize that impact because we don’t see these things all day. These green, blue, yellow, and whatever color boards are helping run the entire world, so saying that PCBs are essential will be an understatement.
