The demonstration is planned for 11:00 am next Thursday.
The drone flying demonstration is scheduled as the last event of the seven week summer class. After the high school girls have spent the first part of their summer visiting a numerous of different corporations for hands on activities and career information centers. The group started with some of the very basics like understanding printed circuit board assembly services. This drone flying project is the final event of the entire course. In previous years, the drone flying activity was outside. Now, however, the licenses needed for that are difficult to get so the activity has had to move inside. The girls still love the opportunity be in charge of flying a drone through a timed course.
Getting the next generation, especially the females, interested in both science and technology is the goal of many STEAM programs through out the country. Starting with basic electronics and studying printed circuit board assembly is an opportunity to both educate and motivate. Consider these statistics about the circuit board industry:
- $44 billion was the revenue of 2014 circuit board and electronic component manufacturing in the U.S.
- It was not until 50 years after the introduction of PCBs, which occurred in 1995, that they became a $7.1 billion industry for the first time. Just five years later, however, in the year 2000, they grew to a $10 billion industry. By the year 2012 the PCP industry jumped to more than $60 billion worldwide.
- The most common multilayer boards are four layers, six layers, eight layers, and 10 layers. The total number of layers that can be manufactured, however, can exceed 42 layers. These types of boards are typically used in extremely complex electronic circuits.
- 70% of all surface assembly quality issues are problems caused by printing techniques.
- Double-sided circuit boards connect the circuits on each side using one of two methods: surface mount technology and through-hole technology.
- Printed circuit boards were designed using clear Mylar sheets before PCB design software was developed. The Mylar sheet method was up to four times bigger than the circuit board itself and designers would create the proposed design on a transparent photomask.