Single Sided PCB's in Consumer-level VCR's

Dec 21, 2004 2 Replies

Recently, I had the need to fix a VCR at home (or rather, to remove a toddler-inserted food item from said VCR. :)



The VCR in question was a fairly new model, having been produced in the past couple of years. It therefore struck me as quite surprising that the main PCB was single-sided, and featured a huge number of wire links. Thinking back, I couldn't remember seeing a single consumer VCR which had a double-sided PCB.



Surely the cost of soldering the wire links - even if mechanically inserted - would far exceed the cost of a double sided PCB? Or is there some other reason that single-sided PCB's are preferable in this application?



Ian.


Because it is less expensive to put the links in than to lay out a double sided board. The interconnections are very straightforward for a device like that. I sold a lot of software to people who wanted to do single/double sided boards because of the economics involved...... Brad

On a production line, a through-hole PC board would be "wave-soldered"

- once all components (including wire links) are placed in the board, the assembly is passed over a wave or fountain of solder, so everything is soldered in one pass. The only extra cost of the wire jumpers is the machine's labour in inserting the links, and that is presumably less than the extra cost of a two-layer board.

Peter Bennett, VE7CEI peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca new newsgroup users info : http://vancouver-webpages.com/nnq GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca

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