When you’re ready to move your design to the manufacturing and assembly stage, there are several important pieces of documentation you’ll need to prepare for your manufacturer. Perhaps the most important is your bill of materials.
While the upfront costs can be considerable, the return on investment is considerable and is proportional to volume and product complexity. If you implement some simple design for testability steps, you can ensure your next board will operate as intended.
How your PCB components are placed and routed can have a large influence on how difficult any rework will be after the board is assembled. In fact, we have three big PCB layout tips and tricks we often recommend to our clients to help ease the rework process:
In PCB design, we are also looking for ways that we can streamline the design process to make it more efficient and the boards easier to manufacture. Here are some ways a high-quality CM can help you to streamline your PCB design process steps.
Too often, a simple parts list is submitted to the PCB contract assembler instead of a finalized bill of materials. Without complete and correct information, it can cause confusion as to what is actually needed to build the board.
Design review takes some time, especially for a high-layer-count, high-net-count PCB. Anytime design problems are spotted, your manufacturer must engage in back-and-forth communication with you, the customer, to fix these design problems. The key to ensuring quick turnaround PCB assembly time is to anticipate these potential problems through early communication.
Need a hand with a current or future PCBA project? Find out what a difference VSE’s experts can make.