Printed Circuit Boards
The history of the printed circuit board or PCB goes back all the way to the time of Thomas Edison. There were a number of early inventors working on the same ideas at the start of the Twentieth Century. As with so many inventions it was war that gave the technology the man-power impetus it needed to be developed. The US army started mass producing early PCBs to use in radio equipment. After World War Two the technology was declassified and made available for commercial use.
Today printed circuit boards are found in virtually every piece of electronic equipment. They are boards that hold the components together and have soldered tracks or signal traces joining the various components together. PCB technology has become advanced using mounted components as well as 'through a hole' components. The tracks are made by an automated process, although some of the narrowest connections are sometimes made by hand ? the technician uses a microscope and a super fine soldering iron.
Without PCB technology we would not have computers, the internet, cars with electric windows, remote controls, washing machines and so many other devices that we take for granted.
The body for regulating the PCB business in North America is the IPC. It is called the IPC because the original organization was called the 'Institute for Printed Circuits'. The organization is still referred to as the IPC but its full name has changed to the Association Connecting Electronics Industries. This organization has offices in Russia, China, Sweden, India as well as the USA. The IPC sets itself up as an international standards organization.
This has caused much resentment among leading American PCB companies because they feel that they greatly contributed to the best practices guidelines that the IPC now sells to China and other countries. While the IPC seeks to improve global standards for PCBs many in America see the organization as actually handing away American know-how to competitors. Critics of this policy often point out that the Chinese would never be foolish enough to give away their manufacturing secrets. Indeed, due to the cheap price and high quality of Chinese-made printed circuit boards American companies are losing lots of business.
The debate rages on. From an environmental point of view, it is better to buy PCBs from local producers since it reduces carbon emissions caused by shipping. The materials to make PCBs are mostly copper and laminate. These materials can easily be sourced from many locations in the world, and so it is simple to localize PCB production.
One suspects that the ICP is somewhat disingenuous. Like Moodys that claims to provide the public service of rating financial services and products they are also positioning themselves to profit from these very products. It might be a case of needing to regulate the regulators.
The purpose of www.pcb-sw.com is not simply to provide news about the PCB sector (although we also do this); rather it is to share, in an honest way, information. We do not profit from the articles found in this directory. We want to provide a level playing field where none are given an unfair advantage. Information cannot be easily hidden in this new age of technology. The Open Source project seeks to make a virtue out of a necessity. By sharing we can come together to improve systems of technology, engineering and thought.
Printed Circuit Boards In Every Room In The House
PCB’s aren’t as uncommon as you think. The technically challenged won’t recognize their widespread use in the home but it’s a well known fact that printed circuit boards are fully functional in the house. The Taiwanese are largely responsible for their return and subsequent resurgence. It’s reported that China’s PCB production value was US$25.46 billion last year (2011) and they are on pace to go above that number for 2012. Fortunately, for those of us who eat, sleep and breathe this industry, that means jobs, work, and increased earnings.
From the appliances you use in the kitchen to the digital controls used to operate multi functioning audio/video equipment you’ll find a printed circuit board behind the helm. This site even ran a story last year about PCB’s infiltration into blenders. I bet the makers of Fritzing had a lot to do with that. If you were to strip down the outer layer of all of the energy using equipment in your household you would find many high functioning circuit boards with sophisticated controls putting out commands. Those who dream of PCB etching as a hobby would probably have a field day in a home like that.
Significant changes are in store for the at home PBC’s used in appliances. New surfacing, miniaturization, and the growth of the use of expoxy resin are just a few of the changes set to come to an industry that is said to grow twenty five percent within the next two or three years. That means better efficiency and speed for things like the regular remote control. I wish I could fast forward in time to see just how well these new technologies are catching on and performing. I can’t wait till we can boast of halogen free panel areas from which to expand. Next generation polyimide labels will be shipping by the hundred thousands.
To the untrained eye, PCB’s don’t even exist. To the rest of us they are a major artery that keeps a household pumping energy and operating the things we take for granted on a daily basis. As costs come down for the raw materials needed to create these devices and the need for better boards as a whole increases the industry is poised for some serious growth. Every major prediction from the trade show industry has proved pretty close to exact and it doesn’t appear this time will be an exception. Keep a close eye on the trigger points and the rest will set itself into motion.
Tech and the Wider Economy, Even Wine
I was an engineer in what feels like a previous life! Living in the San Francisco Bay Area currently, it is easy to see how the tech industry has affected the wider economy. Up until a few months ago I lived in San Diego which is still struggling under the weight of the real estate collapse, but here in the Bay Area things seem to be going pretty well. It must be easier to keep housing prices up when companies like Apple, Google and even the social media giants of Facebook and Twitter have thousands of employees, most of whom earn more than $100,000 per year.
You might be wondering why I moved to the Bay Area, if I’m no longer an engineer. A while ago I started a small wine business with my brother in law who lives here. We needed to be closer together, but also because there is so much wealth being created here. Given that we sell more wine gifts than bottles of wine for the purchaser themself….it makes sense to be close to an area which is churning out such record profits. We’re lucky that the tech industry has continued to do so well even in this epic financial meltdown over the past few years!
Printed Circuit Boards And Vaporizers
One of my major beefs with the world is the lack of significant knowledge about printed circuit boards. Many people simply take the operation of their electronics for granted, and quite frankly they wouldn’t know a PCB from a non-PCB. In fact I suspect many people wouldn’t even know what the TLA (three-letter acronym) stands for.
One of my goals in writing this blog was let people know about the various electronic devices that use PCBs. According to my research, I can say that nearly every device – except for the really simple ones – use PC boards. For example, they are widely used in vaporizers (except for the analog ones like the Magic Flight). Now, one way in which the circuit boards are made is called through-hole construction. I wanted to mention this because the inventors of this technique had great names: Moe Abramson and Stanislaus F. Danko. I honestly feel that the contributions of Mr. Stanislaus F. Danko have gone unrecognized through the years.
Closely related to pcb’s are integrated circuits. One of the major integrated circuit manufacturers is Intel. Using revenue as a metric, Intel is actually the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductor chips. It’s pretty well known that they have the dominant market share for personal computers – every is familiar with the Intel inside logo. In order to stay competitive, Intel has to spend large amount on R&D each year – according to Google finance, the company spent $8.35B on R&D in 2011. That’s billion with a B.
One class of devices that can either be analog or electronic are vaporizers. There’s certainly low-tech vapes available like the Magic Flight, but most vaporizers on the market use printed circuit boards. The most expensive device, the Volcano Vaporizer, has a great deal of engineering and manufacturing quality put into it. Recently, a new model called the Vivape came out that is controlled by a touchscreen, just like an Iphone. That’s certainly a new development for the market.
Anyway, I look forward to blogging more about the various ways circuit boards are used today.
New Invention Of Computing Machinery
The earliest way of computing devices has become revolutionized due to the presence of the new invented technologies through our inventors with brilliant ideas. New invented technologies has really did great things for the people. Now the scientist and engineers are working on the development of a specific device to be utilize for certain computation of such matter. The goal of the certain scientists is to make designers and users who belong to the scientific community re-consider the way they do their jobs.
The impulse behind much of the development of computing machines discussed so far had arisen from numerical computation, the motivation that led to the earliest form of `stored program’ was to come from a very different source: the textile industry. We have seen earlier that one of the fundamental aspects of computational systems is the concept of representing information and, although we have not done so explicitly, the application of this idea can be discerned in all of the artifacts that we have examined up to now: in the development of written representations for numeric values and the mechanical parallels that sprung from these. Thus, the alignment of pebbles on an abacus frame, the juxtaposition of moving scales on a slide-rule, and the configuration of cogged gears on the devices of Charles C, Pascal and Leibniz, are all examples of representational techniques that seek to simplify the complex processes underlying arithmetic tasks. There are, however, categories of information, and representations thereof, other than number upon which computational processes can be performed. The weaving technology developed by Joseph-Marie Jacquard in 1801 illustrates one example of such a category. If you compare to modern technology, one of the most popular technology types are Business Intelligence systems,BI Software and Olap technology which is used in advanced data mining. If you got no clue what business intelligence is, you should start out by taking a look at this page here BI Software which explains the basics behind the advanced types of business intelligence Tools and BI software.
The textile industry was one sited were industrialization had rendered obsolete such skills. Their were invented new technologies for an individual to made their job easily faster and stress free. Whereas, prior to the development of mechanical looms and weaving machines, lengths of fabric had to be woven slowly by hand, the advent of powered tools for carrying out this task meant that quantities of fabric could be mass-produced at a far quicker rate than previously, thereby reducing its expense. Jacquard contributed his idea to solve this problem. Jacquard’s invention of the punched card is now recognized as important largely because of the influence it had on other developers of computing machinery and technology like the ones described here at this BI tools site – BI Tools.
But before those BI Tools was ever inventet and people had never heard of business intelligence or bi software there was Census. Census is a term use and performed by an individual when knowing the number of people in a certain area. It is very difficult for us to compute manually the number of people in a certain place. Societies, or more correctly the wielders of power in societies, have long been concerned with accurately assessing statistical data relating to population. Hollerith think about a machine for doing the purely mechanical work of tabulating population and similar statistics. His thoughts about this things solve when he shared his idea about using cards. Hollerith’s contributions to and application of punched cards was a significant step in the development of automatic computing machinery. With this contribution the certain activity is made to be easy and stress free.
Engineering and EDM
If it is difficult ot define engineering. Before there were civil engineers, chemical engineers and mechanical engineers. Now we have engineers to do with genetics, the environment, IT and software, to name but a few. Engineering in its broadest sense is taking theory and putting it into practice; to take information from the theoretical realm and put it into the practical one to make machines and processes.
The German inventor, Albert Hanson, described flat foil conductors laminated to an insulating board, in multiple layers. From this description engineers over the years have managed to make printed cicuit boards. As theory has advanced so designers and engineers have continued to refine printed cicuit boards that have become the basis of the computer industry and thus the information age.
In 1770 the English physicist Joseph Priestley discovered the erosive effects of electrical discharges. It took scientists and engineers until the 1940s to develop EDM or electrical discharge machining that uses the discovery made by Priestley. It is a process using two electrodes. One EDM electrode is usually made of graphite, the other is the piece that is to be cut (this must be conductive). A high voltage is run from one electrode to the other through the medium of a dielectric liquid that is either water or oil. When the two electrodes come close enough together hundreds of thousands of small sparks are given off. These sparks erode the two EDM electrodes. The result is that the graphite electrode can be moved to precisely cut the workpiece electrode. In this way very hard metals and alloys can be cut to a high precision. This process is also called spark erosion, sink erosion and wire erosion.
There are several key companies around the world supplying the graphite for this process. These include Pocographite and Toyo Tanso. Companies such as Erodex, based in the UK, are manufacturing graphite electrodes as well as tooling parts. Applications are varied but include products for the aerospace industry and automobile industry.
As with printed circuit board engineering and design, the graphite industry is one of the unsung heroes in modern technology.