Pros and Cons of Surface Mount Technology (SMT)
Surface mount technology has many advantages and disadvantages in terms of design, manufacturing cost, PCB assembly and reliability.
Here I will discuss Surface Mount Technology ( SMT ).
Although surface mount technology.offers some design-related benefits or advantages such as smaller and flexible PCBs, lighter weight, noise, shock and vibration, a major disadvantage is that not all electronic components can be used as SMD. Let's discuss and understand one by one.
Smaller, thinner PCBs
:
SMD components
are 60-80% smaller than through-hole counterparts.
These components also weigh significantly less.
Therefore, they occupy less space on SMT PCBs
making them smaller and slimmer.
PCB Flexibility
Since SMD components are directly mounted or soldered to the surface of the board, surface mount technology offers great flexibility inPCB materials
and designs.
Flex PCB
and
Rigid Flex PCB
are only possible with SMT.
Reduced cardboard and material costs
: SMT PCBs are smaller in size and do not require any plated through-holes.
There are also many SMD components that cost less, which are smaller electronic components
.
This helps to reduce the cost of SMT
PCB manufacturing
.
Because surface mount components are smaller and thinner, costs are reduced in handling, packaging and shipping.
Automate Simplified Production
: Through-hole electronic components have leads that need to be manually inserted into plated through-holes.
These leads need to be bent, shaped and cut.
This is not the case for SMD components.
Using automatic SMT picking machines
, they can be placed on the board automatically.
This reduces processing and production costs.
High signal transmission and high frequency
:
SMT PCB components
can mainly support high-density
double-sided PCB
and
multi-layer pcb
.
Due to the low latency, these boards are capable of high-speed signal transmission.
Additionally, since SMD components have no or short leads, radio frequency interference is reduced.
Also SMT
pcb assembly
has stronger anti-vibration ability and no noise.