PCB copper foil supply after chip shortage

A persistent semiconductor shortage is rapidly snowballing into a full-blown component shortage, underscoring the fragility of the current supply chain. Copper is the latest commodity in short supply, and it could further drive up the price of all kinds of electronics. Citing Digirimes, suppliers are experiencing higher costs as copper foil used to make printed circuit boards continues to be in short supply. So one has to suspect that these cost burdens will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher electronics prices.

A quick look at the copper market shows that the metal was selling for $7,845.40 a tonne at the end of December 2020. Today, the price of the commodity is $9,262.85 per ton, an increase of $1,417.45 per ton over the past nine months. According to Tom's Hardware, the price of copper foil has surged 35 percent since the fourth quarter due to higher copper and energy production costs, which in turn has increased the cost of PCBS. To make matters worse, other industries are also increasingly dependent on copper. The media outlet has a comprehensive breakdown of the current cost of copper foil rolls, how many ATX plates can be produced in one roll, etc., for those who wish to take a deeper look at the economic situation. While prices are likely to rise for all kinds of electronics, products like motherboards and graphics cards are likely to be hit the hardest because they use large PCBS that are high up. In this subset, it is probably the budget hardware where the price difference is most felt. High-end motherboards, for example, already command a large premium, and manufacturers may be more willing to absorb small price increases at this level.

Why are most PCB boards green

I don't know if you have found such a situation, most of the PCB board is green, and other colors of the circuit board is rare. Why is that? Others say that black PCB board represents high-end, really?

First, let's take a look at this green board.

Printed circuit board (PCB) is usually composed of welding pad, through hole, welding resistance layer, screen printing layer, copper wire, various components and other parts. solder mask refers to the part of the printed circuit board to get green oil. In fact, solder resistance ink is not only green, there are red, yellow, blue, purple, black, but green is the most common.

The role of the solder shield:

(1) Prevent physical line breaking of conductor circuit;

(2) Prevent short circuit caused by bridge connection in welding process;

(3) Only weld in the part that must be welded to avoid waste of solder;

(4) reduce copper pollution to the welding tank;

(5) Prevent insulation deterioration and corrosion caused by dust, moisture and other external environmental factors;

(6) With high insulation, so that the high-density circuit is possible.

So why are PCB boards mostly green? The main reasons are as follows:

1. Green is less irritating to the eyes. Elementary teachers told us that green is good for the eyes, protect the eyes and resist fatigue. Production and maintenance personnel are not easy to eye fatigue when staring at PCB board for a long time to do business, less damage to the eyes.

2. Low cost. As green is the mainstream in the production process, the purchase quantity of natural green paint will be larger, and the purchase cost of green paint will be lower than that of other colors. At the same time, the use of the same color paint in mass production can also reduce the cost of line change.

3, the board in SMT welding, to go through the tin and paste and the final AOI verification, these processes are to learn optical positioning calibration, green background color on the instrument identification effect is better.

Black PCB board more high-end?

Since about 2007, people began to pay attention to the color of PCB board, mainly because the high-end version of Asus, Microstar and other big factories have adopted black PCB color design, so people gradually think that black PCB board must be high-end. But in fact, this perception is not correct.

The difference between black PCB and green PCB, blue PCB, yellow PCB and other colors of PCB is the final brush on the solder resistance paint color. If the PCB design and manufacturing process is exactly the same, the color will not have any effect on performance, nor will it have any effect on heat dissipation.

As for black PCB, its surface line is almost completely covered, which causes great difficulties for the later maintenance, so it is not very convenient to manufacture and use a color, and black PCB is the most difficult to hole, so the quality rate is relatively lower than other color PCB board, so the price of black is relatively higher.

The reason why "color represents high or low grade", that is because manufacturers like to use black PCB to make high-end products, red, blue, green, yellow and other low-end products resulted. To sum it up: the product gives the color meaning, not the color gives the product meaning.

Whether it is black PCB board, or green PCB board, good performance and good heat dissipation is a good board.