 Once surface-mounting came into use, small-sized SMD components were used where possible, with through-hole mounting only of components unsuitably large for surface-mounting due to power requirements or mechanical limitations, or subject to mechanical stress which might damage the PCB (e.g.by lifting the copper off the board surface).Surface-mount technology emerged in the 1960s, gained momentum in the early 1980s and became widely used by the mid-1990s.