The Mystery Behind the Globs of Epoxy
When Sparkfun visited the factory that makes their multimeters and photographed a mysterious industrial process.
We all know that the little black globs on electronics has a semiconductor of some sort hiding beneath, but the process is one that’s not really explored much in the home shop. The basic story being that, for various reasons , there is no cheaper way to get a chip on a board than to use the aptly named chip-on-board or COB process. Without the expense of encapsulating the raw chunk of etched and plated silicon, the semiconductor retailer can sell the chip for pennies. …read more
