Board-to-board connectors connect power and signal between PCBs, allowing for smaller PCBs and simplified manufacturing and testing. Through-hole technology and surface mount technology have improved PCB fabrication.
Board-to-board connectors are indispensable miniature mating plugs and sockets that directly connect power and signal between printed circuit boards (PCBs). They are usually in-line or straight-line connector pins. Board-to-board connectors typically use a copper alloy that resists oxidation to prevent conductivity from deteriorating over the years.
In electronics manufacturing, an entire device or piece of equipment may need to fit in a certain available space, such as a 19-inch (0.5m) wide rack. If the PCB at the circuit design stage tends to take up too much space, the device can be split into two or more boards. Board-to-board connectors can join power and signal between boards to complete all connections.
The use of board-to-board connectors simplifies the circuit board design process. Smaller PCBs would require manufacturing equipment that may not accommodate a combined larger PCB. Whether a device or product will be squashed into a single PCB or multiple PCBs is a matter of power dissipation, unwanted intercoupling of signals, availability of smaller components, and overall cost of the device or finished product, among others.
In addition, the use of board-to-board connectors simplifies the manufacturing and testing of electronic devices. In electronic component manufacturing, simplified testing reflects huge cost savings. High density PCBs have more traces and components per unit area. Depending on the investment in the sophistication of a manufacturing facility, a device or product may be better designed with multiple interconnected medium-density boards rather than a single high-density board.
Through-hole technology allows for a third dimension in the interconnection of traces and components on a PCB. Early PCBs may use traces of conductive copper in the horizontal and vertical directions along the PCB. By adding more layers of boards, there will virtually be several single layer PCBs between the two sides of a double sided PCB. A typical five-layer multilayer PCB may be less than 0.08 inches (2 mm) thick. Through holes have conductive internal surfaces which can carry currents between any two layers of a multilayer PCB.
Modern electronic devices are more reliable and cheaper to manufacture due to various mature technologies. PCB fabrication for multilayer boards used to be a major challenge due to the hidden connections between the traces of two or more copper layers. Surface Mount Technology (SMT) has boosted miniaturization efforts due to the ease of mounting components on PCBs even without holes. In SMT, robotic equipment applies adhesive to the underside of components before attaching the component to the PCB. The lead on the pre-tinned leads of the component and the lead on the pre-tinned pads on the PCB will be remelted or remelted, and when the PCB is cooled, the soldering process is finished.
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