What do all the wee things on a circuit board mean? Like if I open my tv remote. Who makes these and how do they do it??
In: Physics
A PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is a substrate (usually fibre glass) that is layered together with very thin lines of copper. The substrate acts as a backboard for rigidity, and you can thing of the copper lines as the “wires” that connect all the components together. The “wee” things are various componnts like capacitors, micro controllers, and many other types of components. Many companies manufacture PCBs, both by layer stacking or the older method of eching the copper traces using acid.
Circuit boards begin as boards of something. Copper is then laid out into lines on the boards to connect the components that will be later added in whatever arrangement they are intended to be in. Next, the components are attached. These could be integrated circuit chips, connectors, inductors, capacitors, transistors, relays, or any other of a large variety of components. To understand all of these and what they do, you may want an electrical engineering degree or at least a lot more learning than I can pass on in an ELI5. Now, electricity can run between these components via the copper leads in the board and the board can serve its function.
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