Getting your new electronic product design ready for mass production and PCB assembly requires many steps and challenges. I will give a number of suggestions about how to eliminate costly errors and how to reduce the time to market for your new product designs.
Manufacturing of samples is the first step of a new product launch and is usually done after simulation of product performance by using the simulation capabilities of PCB and industrial design software. Running simulations will require some extra time. On the other hand, the results often will discover errors in your design. Minimizing the quantity of mistakes in your design will simplify attaining the needed performance of your prototypes more rapidly plus in the end save you time.
Selecting a modular design in which each module contains particular core features will simplify the optimization of your prototype by permitting you to replace individual modules which do not meet your reliability as opposed to rebuilding the entire design. When a certain module does not meet the design requirement, it can be replaced fairly quickly. The time benefit at this step is clear. During the design phase however structuring your design into modules will take additional effort.
Depending on the design difficulty, you could think about manually assembling PCB components to save cost. Then again, for average to large complexity this option tends to be very time consuming, in particular if you want to build more than a few samples. To get better-quality boards and to avoid problems with particular components which are difficult to mount think about subcontracting the prototype assembly. That may also save you some time.
To assemble circuit boards, your supplier has to set up the production line for your board. This step is relatively time consuming compared to the assembly time in case of prototype runs. As a result you ought to look for a manufacturer with a fairly small setup expense because this expense is going to be the majority of the sample cost. Because prototype PCB vendors mix boards from numerous customers, you will typically only have a limited choice of board materials and thicknesses when using a PCB sampling service.
Aside from selecting a vendor with small setup expenses, choosing a company that is going to also be able to cope with your full-volume production runs reduces errors since switching manufacturers has the possibility of mistakes as a result of a particular vendor interpreting production design files differently. Your supplier may then very easily reuse your translated design files. This may not be the case if you are switching suppliers. Also, chances are that your new supplier will interpret some data differently which will jeopardize reliability of the finished product.
Various PCB vendors also offer PCB design services which is a huge plus in case you don’t have experience with the design. Also, these suppliers will be able to help you in case there are problems with your design data and be capable to spot problems before the manufacturing.
One concern with small-quantity assembly runs is sourcing of PCB parts. Many components vendors will charge freight fees and have minimum order quantity constraints for certain parts. SMT parts are mounted by mounting them as tape in feeders. Assembling small quantities of components on the other hand is a problem since they do not mount in a feeder. A number of suppliers will stock standard SMT parts that you can order from the supplier. This will save you the time of having to purchase these components individually. Also, you don’t have to worry about using up surplus components.
Selecting a manufacturer that is also able to do the finished product assembly minimizes time to market by eliminating ship times among different suppliers. Also, circuit boards that are found to be faulty during the final testing can be fixed a good deal more quickly. Finally, make sure that you are able to without difficulty converse with your vendor. This will help eliminate expensive errors and shorten manufacturing preparation times throughout all stages of PCB manufacture, PCB assembly and finished product manufacturing.
Tags: PCB assembly, PCB design, PCB layout, PCB manufacturing