How to Create a Bestselling Book and a Million Dollar Business

If you wish to produce some prototypes which need PCB assembly, it doesn't make sense to purchase pricey equipment. Instead, you might wish to subcontract the production to a reliable vendor. Many vendors will offer both PCB production and assembly. I am going to help you find a suitable vendor and give some suggestions as to what to look out for when choosing a supplier.

Often you will find a quote system on contract manufacturer websites. Using this system, you can obtain an instantaneous quotation for your board or assembly. This will help you save time when evaluating several vendors. This quote system should let you to enter all of the board details. Such details include board thickness, material and any particular manufacturing requirements like milling. This will help you avoid any surprises in case of surcharges for particular manufacturing requirements.

If you produce a low volume of boards, the cost usually will be higher per board than the cost when making a higher quantity. This is a result of the board manufacture and assembly setup expense which is generally fixed. Some prototype vendors will combine boards from several clients to help distribute the setup cost and lower the cost per board for small volumes. When you are still in the design phase of your product, you do not wish to spin a high volume of boards at first. Once you refine your design you may slowly want to raise the board volume.

One limiting factor with small-quantity prototypes however is that the choice of materials and material thicknesses will be restricted. If you are utilizing a particular material then chances are there won’t be any other customers using the same material. Furthermore, lead time plays a big role in determining cost. A longer lead time allows the manufacturer more freedom in scheduling your production. This is usually reflected in lower costs which you will see in the quote section. Clearly if you are in a hurry and need to be moved to the top of the pile you will need to spend more money.

Confirm that your vendor can read your production files which normally would be Gerber files for circuit boards but can also be software-specific files in some cases. If you go with a vendor that also provides circuit board design services, your supplier will usually be able to fix problems that may exist in your board files. That will help eliminate unnecessary delays.

When outsourcing PCB assembly, ensure that your vendor can assemble all of the package types that your board uses. Some manufacturers cannot assemble particular type of IC packages such as BGA, chip-scale packages or very small component types. E-mail your supplier if you have questions about what type of components can be assembled. That will eliminate problems later on.

A number of manufacturers will have stock of normally used components which you can pull from rather than purchasing each component yourself. If you pull inventory from your vendor, you have to include in your BOM data on which components you are consigning yourself. Then send your BOM with that data to your supplier.

Your supplier can usually also manufacture the SMT stencil which is needed for SMT board assembly. Manufacture of the stencil requires some time. So be certain to purchase the stencil right away when ordering your boards to reduce the PCB assembly time.

To make certain that your circuit boards will function, make certain that your supplier is quality certified and offers the tests and board inspection methods that are required. Please notice, though, that particular tests, such as ICT testing requires additional time and expense to prepare appropriate test fixtures.

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