What You Should Know About Surface Mount Technology

We are living in an age where scientific progress has been quite astounding and the scientists are coming up with modern devices and apparatuses. Working of these devices and apparatuses is entirely based upon the new findings. The use of printed circuit board has changed the mechanism of all major devices. They have become smaller yet more powerful and the credit for that should go to the scientific development. However, the best is yet to come.

Surface Mount Technology or SMT has been a way of creating electronic circuits in such a manner where the components are placed one over another on the printed circuit board. The devices that are made on this technique or technology are termed as Surface Mount Devices. The components can be placed or used on the same board. However, the technicians take special care for installing the bigger components like larger transformers and power semiconductors. The technicians use SMT as a component that is relatively smaller that the other technology which is known as Through-Hole (TH) technique. Instead of general fixing methods, they use short pins and solder balls to fix these components on the board.

As said earlier, the SMT technique is different from Through-hole techniques. The difference lies in the components also that are used in these techniques. The major equipment for SMT include the following:

• Pick-and-Place Machine

• Equipment for Soldering SMT/ Soldering iron

• Equipment for Re-flow Soldering

• Equipment for Cleaning solvent in SM Technology

• Solder-Paste Screen Printer for SMT Stencil Printer

• Baking and Curing Oven for SM Technology

• Inspection and Repairing Equipment for SM Technology

Since the Surface Mount Devices (SMD) are the parts and parcels of SMT, therefore the components attached with with SMD also remain connected to the SMT. These components include:

• Surface Mount Resistors and Capacitors

• Plastic Leaded Chip Carriers (PLCC)

• Leadless Ceramic Chip Carriers (LCCC)

• Ball Grid Array (BGA)

• Ceramic Leaded Chip Carriers (CLCC)

• Small Outline Transistors (SOT)

• Small Outline Integrated Circuit (SOIC and SOP)

• Small Outline J Packages (SOJ)

• Fine Pitch SMD Packages (QFP, SQFP)

Modern Uses/ Applications:

Since the technology behind SMT is proven time and again, therefore more and more electronic companies are showing a readiness towards using the technology in the forthcoming products. Both LED and LCD televisions use the SMT techniques and the results are quite evident to us. These televisions have better technical utilities than their predecessors. The technology powers the Printed Circuit Boards that are separately useful for modern lighting devices that are used in the public places. These lights get more intensity without consuming much power.

With the on-going efforts of the scientists, you can always expect better equipments would come in due course of time which will be more efficient than what we find around us at present. As far as the utilities of SMT stencil printer by Millennium Circuits Limited is concerned, it has been adopted in the bigger printing organizations. They are better than the existing ones.  

How does the Surface Mount Technology Benefit the PCB Manufacturing

Nearly, most of today's electronics produced for the mass is manufactured on support of the surface mount technology (SMT). So, what has made the technology so popular in the electronics manufacturing industry? It's nothing, but the advantages that the surface mounted devices based on the technology provide with respect to performance and manufacture ease. Surface Mount technology today is recognized as the universal standard for designing electronic circuits where the components need to be mounted directly onto the Printed Circuit Board's (PCB) surface.

These components feature metal tabs that need to be directly soldered onto the surface of the PCB on solder pads. The soldering is usually best done following the process of wave soldering. This large scale process helps soldering the small components onto the PCB, which further aids in the formation of an electronic assembly.

Why Rely on SMT for Designing Electronic Circuit Boards?

Today, electronic circuit boards should always be manufactured following a high mechanical approach to ensure reducing the costs of manufacture. The conventional electronic components do not follow the approach. Though it was possible to go ahead with some mechanization, it was required to pre-form the component leads. Moreover, problems often emerged when the leads were plugged into the boards. Mostly, the wires did not fit properly, which significantly slowed down the production rates.

It was soon found out that the wires that had been conventionally used for creating a connection is not required for constructing the Printed Circuit Boards. As against the approach of placing the leads through holes, the components could easily be soldered onto the boards. This approach largely saved the production cost of the bare Printed Circuit Boards as it was no longer required to create lead holes in the boards. This new technology of mounting the components on the board's surface is referred to as surface mount technology. The devices that were used in the process is referred to as surface mount devices or SMDs in short.

Utility of SMT Today

SMT is largely and exclusively used for the purpose of manufacturing electronic circuit boards today. The technology not only helps making the performance better, but also eliminates the requirement of manual intervention in the processing of the assembly. It is always difficult to automatically place the wired components as they need to be pre-formed to make sure that they fit the particular hole spacing. Moreover, problems also persisted with the placement issue.

Though many connectors along with some other components still need assisted placement, Printed Circuit Board's are usually developed to lessen the need considerably. Even, alteration of design to accommodate the use of components that support automatic placement was taken up. Additionally, the manufacturers of components have also developed some exclusive surface mount components version that virtually enabled automated assembly for most of the Printed Circuit Boards.

The approach of surface mount technology was quickly adopted in the industry; simply because, the technology facilitated higher level of mechanization. This in turn reduced the manufacturing costs of the board largely. In this context, it is to be noted that the process of wave soldering is used for both surface mounted and through-hole printed circuit assemblies.