Surface-Mount and Through-Hole Considerations

Through-Hole Considerations

The older technology for op amps and other components is through-hole. Components are constructed with leads that insert through holes in the board — hence the name.

Through-hole components, due to their size, are more suited to applications where space is not an issue. The components themselves are frequently lower in cost, but the PCB is more expensive due to the fact that the PCB fabrication house has to drill holes for component leads. PCBs are primarily a mechanical fabrication — the number of holes and number of different drills have a big impact on the price.

The leads on a through-hole op amp are arranged on a 0.1-inch grid. Many PCB layout people like to maintain the 0.1-inch grid for the rest of the components as well. Resistors and other passive components can even be purchased with leads pre-bent to land on a 0.1 inch grid. Some electrolytic capacitors have leads that are on a 0.025-inch grid.



These component sizes may force a lot of wasted area on the PCB. Components that ideally should be placed close to the op amp itself may be forced several tenths of an inch away, due to intervening components. Therefore, through hole circuitry is not recommended for high speed analog circuitry, or for analog circuitry in proximity to high speed digital.

Some designers attempt to overcome the long trace length caused by resistors by placing the resistors on the board vertically, one lead of the resistor bent close to the body of the part. This is common in older consumer electronics. This allows for denser placement of parts, and may help some with trace length — but each resistor exposes almost 1 cm of one component lead to radiated signals, and lead self-inductance.

An advantage of the through-hole approach of PCB layout is that the through-holes themselves
can serve as feedthroughs, reducing the number of vias in complex circuits.

Surface Mount

Surface-mount circuitry does not require a hole for each component lead. Automated testing,
however, may require vias on every node. The holes were never an issue with through-hole circuitry, because every component lead made a hole in the board. The PCB layout designer, who is used to designing a board with a minimum number of vias, now has to put a via on EVERY node of the circuit. This can make a Swiss cheese out of a nice continuous ground plane — negating many of the advantages it provides.

Fortunately, there is a close variation of the “via on every node” requirement. This requirement
can often be met by putting a test pad on every node. The automated test station can then access the analog circuitry from the top of the board. A clamshell test fixture is significantly more expensive than one that accesses only one side of the board. The extra cost can be justified if there is documentation that circuit performance will be unacceptable with vias.

Signal connections to ground or the power supply may have to be made through a small fixed resistor instead, so the automated equipment can access that pin of the IC and test its function.