Printed Circuit Boards with bare copper are called “Copper Clad” or raw board. A Printed Circuit Board is an insulated “Board” made from a phenolic plastic impregnated type of paper, fiberglass mats in an epoxy, an insulated copper or other metal core or Teflon/plastic sheet. A Copper Clad PC board is a sandwich of alternating conductive layers & insulating layers. Our circuit board material is standard .062in. thick with 1oz. Copper/sq.ft./side. These layers can have a single layer of copper over the insulator called; Single sided Printed Circuit Board, two layers of conductor (1 each side); generally called Double Sided or you can have in excess of 40+ layers. With home made Copper Clad Boards you are constrained to 2 sides. To fabricate a Printed Circuit board from a Copper Clad Board, you must generate a pattern of traces (Lines & Pads) to interconnect your components. These traces can be drawn onto the board, Screened on the board or the copper can routed off the board using a programmed computer controlled router (1 & 2 Sided). Screening or drawing on the copper clad board requires using a special ink that will protect the copper from an acid etch to remove the un-needed copper, Now you can use a one of several computer programs to generate a photographically reproducible layout of the traces layer by layer that is used to create screen(s). By selective etching you have removed the un-needed copper. Boards are generally coated with either Tin or Solder to protect the copper.
|
See More... |