When there’s no PCB, we often solder the universal plate by ourselves. The universal plate has lots of shortcoming, it needs your ability of soldering. If there’s just a little tip which you haven’t connected, the whole circuit won’t be in work and you have to check out if the circuit is connected or if the components are out of work.
The process is painful, fortunately, we have the PCB (printed circuit board). PCB makes it easier to make a circuit. You don’t need to solder the circuit, what you need to do is design the circuit: how to connect these components with wires, then draw it on the EDA to generate a Gerber file. After all the things, you can send it to us, the rest things are being finished by us.
PCB is a printed circuit board, so it’s a board without any components. And PCBA (printed circuit board assembly) is a board with components which are needed on, it’s an integrated circuit board.