You’ve probably seen plenty of printed circuit board terminology bandied around and sometimes it isn’t clear what it means. Circuit boards are the key to a system’s design in the electronics industry, so if your business uses them, it’s useful to understand the language.
We’ve put together a guide to basic PCB terminology to help you communicate with other individuals and businesses in the sector.
What does PCB stand for?
PCB: An abbreviation for printed circuit board, a PCB is an electronic assembly manufactured with copper conductors to create electrical connections between the components.
PCBA: Stands for printed circuit board assembly, a term that is also abbreviated to PCB assembly. It means assembling components onto the bare PCB board using surface mount technology or through hole technology.
SMT: An abbreviation of surface mount technology, this is a more modern method of placing components onto the PCB surface.
THT: Through-hole technology is a more traditional method, which is useful when a product needs higher heat endurance, or a stronger connection between layers.
PTH: Plated through-hole that is part of THT. The through-holes are plated with copper, permitting electrical conductivity to travel through the board.
NPTH: Non-plated through-hole is also part of THT. The through-holes are not plated. This technique is generally used for a screw hole or positioning hole.
SMD: Surface mount device, meaning the electronic component that is placed onto a PCB via the surface mount technology method.
Rigid-flex PCB: Contains elements of both rigid and flexible circuit boards to create a hybrid model, which can be folded or repeatedly flexed.
PCB prototyping: The prototyping of a printed circuit board assembly before the PCBA production run, it minimises the amount of reworking required, therefore speeding up the development of a PCB design by eliminating guesswork.
UOR: Stands for urgent operational requirements.
Box build: The process of housing completed PCBAs in a ready-to-use enclosure.
IPC-A-610: The most widely used inspection standard in the electronics industry for inspectors and operators.
ISO 9001: The international standard for quality management.
AS9100: the most widely adopted and standardised quality management system in the aerospace industry.
ISO 13485: The quality standard for medical device manufacturing.
IPC-J-STD-001: Outlines the required materials for producing electronic assemblies such as solders, fluxes and cleaning agents.
Solder: A fusible metal alloy that can be fused or melted easily to create a permanent bond between pieces of metal, solder removes oxides, improves the solder flow and combats re-oxidation.
Flux: The flux enables the solder to flow in a more uniform manner over the surfaces, preventing balling up.
AOI: An automated visual inspection method used to test PCB assemblies for defects.
BGA: A process of mounting ball grid arrays onto the PCB using the solder reflow process.
AQL: Stands for acceptance quality level, which is an acceptable number of defective boards on any production run of PCBs.
COB: Chip On Board technology used to protect the bare and fragile chips.
The above terms are just some of the useful PCB terminology that designers and manufacturers need to know to aid efficient operations.