Or why aspect ratio rules all.

The humble via comes in many flavors. By connecting one layer of a conductor pattern to another, vias have connected the world. My career has depended on them as part of the hardware I used to design for others to use. A foundational innovation in electronics brought plated through-holes to the masses. As a leap forward from wire-wrap technology, multilayer printed circuit boards put a “mainframe” in each of our pockets almost overnight.

From the first plated through-hole to the latest, the trend is to support higher-density interconnect. The key driver in plating holes is the aspect ratio, the hole’s width relative to its depth. For a through-hole, the depth is the thickness of the PCB. Most reputable fabricators can handle a 10:1 ratio, such that a common 0.062" board thickness will require a minimum finished hole size 0.006" (FIGURE 1).

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