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.