Valley Services Electronics

Taken by themselves, the tooling holes in a circuit board would seem commonplace as they are regular-looking thru-holes drilled in the board. But a closer look at their purpose will reveal their importance. Some are used for attaching hardware on a circuit board, while others are designed to help with the board’s fabrication and assembly. We will examine these different holes in greater detail as we discuss PCB tooling holes and the design guidelines that accompany them.

Electronic components’ makers face some severe supply chain issues as the demand for semiconductors is spiking worldwide. Let’s take a look at some of the causes of this global electronic component shortage and how you can guard yourself against the effects.

Most original equipment manufacturers of electronics do not have their own printed circuit board fabrication and assembly facilities. To get their boards built and, in some cases, designed, they rely on the services of circuit board contract manufacturers for PCB development.

Instead of electronics original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) supporting the entire production process for their products, it is often more cost-effective to contract out this work. For example, building a circuit board takes a lot of unique equipment, processes, and trained staff, putting a demand on the OEM to provide. Alternatively, a contract manufacturer specializing in turnkey PCB assembly can do the entire job faster, less expensively, with better results. Let’s take a closer look at how this works.

A printed circuit board’s manufacturing requirements change during the board’s life-cycle. Boards planned for long-term production will increase from their initial low-volume prototyping manufacturing requirements to high-volume builds. PCB designers need to prepare for this growth and work with an assembly vendor with scalable PCB manufacturing services. Here are some more details on what that means.

PCB manufacturing is by nature a customized process as each design is usually unique in its size, configuration, and purpose. But there are some aspects of building a board that can affect the cost more than others. Here we will take a look at some of the factors that can impact the cost of custom PCB assembly so that you will know what to expect on your next design.