Basic Concepts Related to Printed Circuit Boards

PCB design is an indispensable skill for hardware engineers. To become an excellent hardware engineer, you must first understand some basic concepts related to PCBs to grasp the core points in the specific design process.

The main function of the printed circuit board is to facilitate the electrical connection of various shapes and packaged components. Therefore, the design goals of PCB also have the following points:

Properly fix various packaged components on the circuit board, and be able to connect the signal (through the pad) of each pin of these devices;

When connecting the pins of each device, it must meet the required electrical performance to achieve the original intention of the circuit design. The circuit board itself cannot bring connection errors, noise, distortion, etc. to each signal;

At the same time, it must meet the requirements of various mechanical, processing, heat dissipation, electromagnetic interference and other aspects.

Refer to the above PCB picture, the main concepts of printed circuit board (PCB):

Part: The components soldered on the PCB board, which is also the role of the PCB. The components on the PCB light board appear as pads + silk screen

Pad: Connect the pin of the component to the board through electrical means, which corresponds to the pin of the device

Track/Trace: The signal line connecting the device pins depends on the nature of the signal, such as current size, speed, etc. The length and width of the trace are also different

Via: If the circuit cannot realize all the signal traces on one level, the signal lines must be connected across layers through vias. The form and aperture of the vias depend on the characteristics of the signal and the process of the processing plant Requirements

Layer: The circuit board is divided into many layers, in addition to the signal layer, there are other layers used to define processing, etc.

Silk screen/overlay: It can also be called the silk screen layer, which is used to mark various related information on the device

Solder mask: It can also be understood literally to prevent the adjacent pins without electrical connection from being soldered by mistake.

Mounting hole: a hole that is conveniently placed for installation or debugging

The above information is provided by PCB factory.