What does ‘crossed-out PC boards’ mean in this context.
I realize that it’s some kind of damage but what exactly ?
Thanks
When they build printed circuit boards, the boards don’t all work. Sometimes the tracks on the PCB will etch all the way through and become a bad connection. There are numerous other faults that can occur as well. Sometimes you’ll get a short between tracks.
To save money, the PCBs are built in large sheets, kinda like how money is printed on big sheets then cut to size later. If you look at the picture of the guy holding the sheet closely, you will see that several of the individual circuit boards on the panel are literally crossed out, they have a big X marked across them. The article is talking about the cost of just manufacturing the entire circuit board with the cross-outs and failing the circuits that don’t work later vs. the cost of testing each individual panel in the sheet.
My guess is that it refers to PCBs with defective sections. Rather than throwing away the defective PCB, it can still be used if the defective sections are in parts of the board used for optional features. It would save some money in waste at the expense of complicating the manufacturing process. Chip manufacturers do similar things to increase their yields. A 32K RAM chip may actually be a 64K RAM chip with a defect in one half of the chip. The manufacturer can disable the bad half of the chip and sell it as a lower capacity chip.