What is PCB Assembly?

PCB assembly is short for printed circuit board assembly, which means soldering electronic components on the printed circuit board. Usually, both SMT assembly and PTH assembly are used in a completed electronic PCB assembly. Here, we would like to introduce a little about SMT assemblies, PTH assemblies and other methods of PCB assembly services as a Chinese PCB assembly supplier.

SMT assembly is short for surface mount technology assembly, which means assembling electronic components on the PCB by surface mount technology. The normal processes of SMT assembly are printing solder paste on the printed circuit board by solder stencil first; then placing the relative components on the surface of the PCB; and lastly, passing the PCB with components through a reflow soldering oven, so the solder paste will be melted and the components will be soldered. It is the most widely used PCB assembly services method because of its high efficiency and accuracy.

PTH assembly is short for plated through hole assembly, which means soldering the electronic components on the PCB by soldering their pins in the PTH holes. Both wave soldering and manually soldering can be used in printed circuit board assembly. The normal processes for PTH assembly are: plugging the pins of the PCB components into the through holes of the PTH firstly and then passing the PCBs through the wave soldering equipment with hot liquid solder; lastly the components are soldered in the PTH holes when the solder is cooled down. It is the other most widely used PCB assembly services technology.

Although SMT assembly and PTH assembly are the two most essential methods used by printed circuit board assembly suppliers, we can also just solder the PTH components on the PCB manually with a soldering iron; this is the third most commonly used PCB assembling method. But it is impossible for mass production since the efficiency of manual printed circuit board assembly is very low.

Nowadays, one single PCB board assembly may contain all mixed PCB assembly technology, so PCB assembly companies should be experienced in all these techniques. Viasion is a custom PCB assembly manufacturer in China, and we are pretty experienced in all kinds of PCB assembly methods. We focus on small to medium-volume PCB manufacturing and PCB assembly China with 12 years of experience.