High Volume PCB Manufacturing

In electronic product development, the most important transition occurs during the transition from prototyping to PCB production. Although the basic process flow remains largely the same between prototype PCB and high volume PCB manufacturing, each process is unique and involves specific goals. Engineers and PCB designers choose the best PCB manufacturer at every stage of product development. Understanding the differences in these manufacturing processes can also help ease the transition from PCB prototyping to high volume PCB manufacturing.

Efficient High Volume PCB Manufacturing

Efficient high volume PCB manufacturing can be defined as building boards that achieve maximum yield, shortest turnaround time, and optimal cost. These goals can be achieved by doing the following:

How to achieve the highest yield

Yield is the ratio of usable boards to production boards. The highest yield can be achieved by adopting good design principles, including following DFM rules for high volume PCB manufacturing and optimizing design quality during prototyping.

How to get the shortest PCB turnaround time

A standard indicator of a good high volume PCB manufacturing process is the speed at which the board is built. However, speed cannot be used as a compensation for quality. Therefore, it is very important for us to choose a high volume PCB manufacturing and assembly service provider.

How to get the best cost

For high volume PCB manufacturing, achieving the lowest cost is not necessarily the best option. It is through time and cost that high volume PCB manufacturing produces the highest quality boards at the lowest yield.

High volume PCB manufacturing is oriented to individual consumers, and the order scale is large; small volume PCBs are oriented to corporate customers, and the degree of customization is high. High volume PCB manufacturing is generally oriented to individual consumers, and is mainly used in consumer electronics such as computers and mobile terminals. There are fewer PCB varieties, and the order scale is large. Small volume boards are generally oriented to enterprise-level users, and are mainly used in communication equipment, industrial control, medical, aerospace, national defense and other fields. There are many types of products, and the demand for a single type of product is relatively small, but the degree of product customization is high.

Advantages of High Volume PCB Manufacturing

High volume PCB manufacturing has advantages in customer structure and cost control, while small-volume PCB manufacturers have advantages in customer responsiveness. Both high volume PCB manufacturing and small-volume boards show the characteristics of customization, because it is necessary to meet the customer's requirements for the application scenario, material, area, and performance parameters of the final product. High volume PCB manufacturers generally participate in research and development at the early stage of customer product design, and arrange the types of substrates and components needed in the production process, wiring schemes, etc. Due to the customized characteristics of PCB, in order to ensure the stability of the upstream, customers will not easily change PCB suppliers, but will allocate order shares among different suppliers according to the quotation.

For high volume PCB manufacturing enterprises, on the premise of ensuring the quality of their own products, if the number of orders from major customers continues to increase, the relationship between the company and major customers is close, and more order shares can be obtained, then high volume PCB manufacturing enterprises can reduce costs and improve efficiency by continuously expanding production capacity, and enter a virtuous circle with downstream customers. In terms of pricing strategy, in order to consolidate the relationship with downstream customers to gain more market share, high volume PCB companies generally only guarantee a relatively reasonable gross profit rate, and the quotation will not be too high. The profit model of high volume PCB manufacturing is to meet product requirements, obtain more order shares to expand scale, reduce costs and improve efficiency, core customer structure and cost control.

Small volume PCB manufacturing has a higher degree of customization, strong bargaining power for downstream, and rapid response capabilities. The quantity of small volume PCB orders is large, and the degree of customization is higher. The delivery period to customers is short, so small volume PCB manufacturers are required to respond quickly and organize production after customers place orders; and the application fields of small volume boards are mostly emerging mid-to-high-end fields, and the quality requirements for PCB products are stricter, and manufacturers’ technical and higher yield requirements.

Due to the complexity of production technology and process management and high technical difficulty brought about by the many characteristics of small-batch boards, there are fewer domestic high-end and high volume PCB manufacturers. From the demand side, small volume PCBs have a high degree of customization, extensive downstream applications, scattered orders, and low downstream concentration, resulting in weak downstream bargaining power. High volume PCB manufacturers have relatively higher gross profit margins under the same technical production conditions.

High Quality High Volume PCB Manufacturing

The overall goal of high volume PCB manufacturing is to efficiently and reliably produce high-quality PCBs. For high volume PCB manufacturing, operations such as design, components, and functions have been verified in the prototype stage of development, and the efficiency and cost of high volume PCB manufacturing will be relatively efficient.

Attributes of High Volume PCB Manufacturing

●Reliability: Reliability is one of the main attributes of high volume PCB manufacturing. The process must be able to run multiple times and deliver large numbers of identical boards over time with a high yield (availability).

●Testing: High volume PCB manufacturing must have the ability to perform quality assurance (QA) testing.

●Cost-effective: Due to the large number of high volume PCB manufacturers, the cost of each manufacturer must be reasonable. In fact, consumers often view cost as the primary determinant of price.

Prototype PCB production and high volume PCB manufacturing obviously have different goals and attributes. A customer transitioning a PCB design from prototype to production may require some changes, including transitioning between PCB manufacturers, since most PCB manufacturers specialize in either prototyping or high volume PCB manufacturing.

Transitioning from Prototyping to High Volume PCB Manufacturing

To optimize product development, it is ideal to transition directly from prototyping to high volume PCB manufacturing. In most cases, during the prototype PCB manufacturing process, it is not uncommon for the PCB manufacturer to often need to make adjustments to the design files to facilitate board manufacturing, thereby obtaining a more accurate set of design files. Without these documents, engineering change orders (ECOs) may be required, which can be time-consuming and expensive prior to production. For this reason or others, there can be certain difficulties in moving PCB prototypes to high volume PCB manufacturing, including:

Design files: New high volume PCB manufacturing may require additional design files or files in a different format than the prototype manufacturer.

Equipment or process changes: High volume PCB manufacturing may not be able to build boards to the same specifications used by prototype PCB manufacturers.

Component changes: It is not uncommon for components to remain unavailable even after a design has been put into production. These shortages can be caused by obsolescence, which can occur when component manufacturers make replacements based on technological advances.

Design changes: After high volume PCB manufacturing products are put into production, insufficient operation or poor performance may require redesign and reprototyping.

These issues can severely delay high volume PCB manufacturing and even necessitate design modifications that can halt production until the issue is resolved. When transitioning from PCB prototyping to high volume PCB manufacturing, you may also be faced with changing PCB manufacturers, and these problems may not necessarily be avoided. However, the transition from prototyping to high volume PCB manufacturing can be greatly simplified by implementing certain guidelines during product development.

Simplify the transition from prototyping to high volume PCB manufacturing, one of the best ways to ease the transition from prototyping to high volume PCB manufacturing is to choose a prototype PCB manufacturer that will create the best final prototyping along with the design files. Eliminate the need for ECO, which would slow down board production, allowing for a better and faster move to high volume PCB manufacturing.

Get High Volume PCB Manufacturing

Reprint: Thank you for your recognition of the website platform and your favor on our original works and articles. You are very welcome to share with your personal webmaster or circle of friends, but please indicate the source of the article "https://www.infopcb.com" when reprinting.