When electronic products were first invented, people did not think that they would ever be mass produced or have any kind of mass appeal. The advent of the printed circuit board (PCB) made the mass production of these appliances and devices. The technology was initially developed by the United Staes military for communications and weapons systems but now the commercial application of prototype circuit boards is clear.
As engineers work on prototype printed circuit boards, they have changed a lot of the qualities of the devices that rely on them to work.
- Newer printed circuit boards are much faster. Everyone wants their technology to work faster. It often seems that nothing can be too fast. The advancements in the printed circuit boards is very clear in the RF industry. This is mostly because designing new circuit boards for the cell phone industry is the platform many engineers prefer to work on. The increase in speed has helped a number of industries other than just the cell phone industry. It generally is a good thing across the board.
- The variety and size of available components. People expect their devices to be speedy and the interior components are becoming smaller and smaller. More and more printed circuit boards are being manufactured using surface mounted technology rather than the through the hole technology that was the preferred method for a long time. The switch has changed the way that the printed circuit boards are made and the amount of power that can be handled by the boards.
- The newer printed circuit boards can handle more connections. Advancements are made in printed circuit boards so, too, are changed made in the other aspects of the board. As everything becomes smaller and the boards need to do more in s smaller space, more and more connections are being added to increase the functionality of the boards and make even more devices possible.
Advancements in Printed Circuit Boards and the Cell Phone Industry
There are no industries where the advancements in printed circuit boards has made more of a difference than in the cell phone industry. Many of us cannot imagine leaving the home without a cell phone and quite a few people no longer have landlines in their home. This is except for emergencies. It should be noted that in the United States it is the law that all homes that are wired for phones have a dial tone to reach 911 such an emergency.
Mobile phone technology was first developed in the 1970s. Back then, the car phone was a huge device that took its own suitcase to carry and was not anywhere near what we would consider to be mobile today. The smart phones we carry around and depend upon today bear very little resemblance to those early car phones.
Since the 1970s, engineers and researchers have worked to make the phones operate faster and be smaller. Smart phones today and faster, have more storage capacity and are more efficient even than the smart phones were five years ago.
A lot of these advancements are because printed circuit boards have been made to be more efficient, compact and powerful. By making these items all of these things, the manufacturers of of new devices can add more components, this is one reason the increase in connections is so important. Our smart phones are used for so much more than just making calls. All of the features we cherish and demand are made possible by the increased connections and added components that have been made possible by these advancements in printed circuit board technology.
Some of the examples of the new(er) features include WiFi connections, cameras and touch screens. Moving forward, the technology that made the mass production of electronic products a reality is continuing to change the way we interact with each other and the world around us.
It is easy to take for granted the technology that works “behind the scenes” to make our devices possible. In 2013, the number of people who accessed the internet from a mobile device surpassed the number of people who did so on a computer. If it was not for the current printed circuit boards, none of this would be possible.
