I believe that many people are no strangers to PCB circuit boards and may often hear them in daily life, but they may not know much about PCBA and may even be confused with PCB. So what is a PCB? How did PCBA evolve? What is the difference between PCB and PCBA? Let’s take a closer look.

PCB is the abbreviation of Printed Circuit Board. When translated into Chinese, it is called printed circuit board. Since it is made by electronic printing, it is called “printed” circuit board. PCB is an important electronic component in the electronics industry, a support for electronic components, and a carrier for the electrical connection of electronic components. PCB has been widely used in the production of electronic products. The reason why it can be widely used is as follows:

1. High wiring density, small size, light weight, which is conducive to miniaturization of electronic equipment.

2. Due to the repeatability and consistency of the graphics, the errors in wiring and assembly are reduced, and the time for equipment maintenance, debugging and inspection is saved.

3. It is conducive to mechanization and automatic production, which improves labor productivity and reduces the cost of electronic equipment.

4. The design can be standardized to facilitate interchange.

PCBA is the abbreviation of Printed Circuit Board + Assembly. That is to say, PCBA is the entire process of passing the PCB empty board SMT and then the DIP plug-in.

Note: SMT and DIP are both ways to integrate parts on the PCB. The main difference is that SMT does not need to drill holes on the PCB, and the DIP needs to insert the pin of the part into the already drilled hole. SMT (Surface Mounted Technology) surface mount technology, mainly uses the placement machine to place some micro-small parts on the PCB board, and its production process is: PCB board positioning, printing solder paste, placement machine placement, over reflow Furnace and finished inspection. DIP stands for “plug-in”, which means inserting parts on the PCB. This is the integration of parts in the form of plug-ins when some parts are large and not suitable for placement technology. Its main production processes are: adhesive backing, plug-in, inspection, wave soldering, plate printing and finished inspection.

As can be seen from the introduction above, PCBA generally refers to a processing process, which can also be understood as a finished circuit board, which can be considered as PCBA only after the processes on the PCB board are completed. The PCB refers to an empty printed circuit board with no parts on it. In general: PCBA is a finished board; PCB is a bare board.