One of the keyways procurement departments contribute to their organization financially is by reducing the overall cost of the purchases they create. When it involves reducing the price of a PCB Assembly project, there are some steps you’ll be able to take that not every company considers. It’s difficult to create a top-quality product at the bottom cost. the standard of a PCB depends on the competence of its design for assembly, testing, repair, reliability, manufacturing, and yield. Several factors impact the price of a PCB assembly.
However, the designers can consider certain factors which will decrease the PCB cost, like reducing the board complexity, using fewer components, choosing an economical substrate for PCB, etc. Once the PCB Fabrication is finished, there’s limited scope to cut back the assembly cost. So, the main focus to chop the value should be right from the initial stages of PCB design. While PCB Manufacturing, choosing large batches, considering mounting PCBs on panels, and selecting the acceptable board surface finish can assist in reducing the assembly cost. Following the set guidelines in each stage of the PCB, development can help balance the price and quality to an excellent extent.
Although PCB assemblers are constantly trying to seek out ways to cut back circuit-board assembly costs to draw in more business and ultimately gain more profit, price varies from one assembler to a different. We strongly recommend you discover a balance between assembly quality, customer service, and cost. The priority is to adjust your circuit design to reduce the assembly cost and pinpoint the right PCB Assembler with the most effective overall service within your budget.
We are providing the highest suggestions to cut back the PCB Assembly cost without negotiating on the standard of the PCB.
1. Find a Good, Professional, and Low-cost PCB Assembler
Almost all PCB assembly services providers declare to supply cost-effective service, but not all of them offer what they claimed. Firstly, you ought to fully awake to your projects’ requirements and budget, then conduct a hunt from head to toe on each assembler through Internet, magazines, or trade extravaganza. Plenty of your time and efforts are required, but it’ll be totally worthwhile. When researching PCB Assemblers, confirm you cover the subsequent aspects.
- Certificates:
Certificates accurately ensure a PCB assembler’s manufacturing capabilities and management regulations they keep on with, necessary certifications include ISO9001, RoHS, UL, etc. ISO9001 may be a family of international quality management standards and guidelines planning to promote global companies and organizations’ capabilities to fulfill and exceed the requirements and expectations of consumers by efficiently and effectively improving the standard of their products and services. RoHS, short for Restrictions of Hazardous Substances, refers to a series of restrictive laws regarding the application of 6 hazardous substances within the manufacturing of electronic and electrical equipment for environmental considerations. Applicable for PC boards and power supplies, the UL listing service requires manufacturers to carefully test their products by conforming to correct procedures so as to attenuate product hassles.
- Equipment
Up-to-date equipment contributes to high efficiency and top quality of assembly. With the event and increasing popularity of SMT (Surface Mount Technology), SMT placement equipment is closely related to components’ high precision placing and its high manufacturing speed.
- Component Procurement
Based on our years’ experience in the PCB industry, we noticed too often money and time are lost within the PCB boards manufacturing stage due to the disjointed relationships between phases of the method. To avoid wasting money and time, we recommend you cooperate with PCB Assemblers which provide components sourcing services. Thus, you’ll be able to fully concentrate on project engineering and improvement, and let the Assembler do what it’s good at purchase cheap but excellent components and assemble them onto your circuit boards. We’ll discuss a way to judge whether a PCB assembler features competitive components sourcing capability within the later part of this text.
Apart from those aspects, quotation rate, lead time, price, manufacturing capabilities, minimum order volume et al. A number of those aspects are going to be discussed within the following paragraphs. It’s worth mentioning that world electronic circuits are supported US dollar system, resulting in few fluctuations in expenses between countries except labor costs that are distinctive from country to country. Therefore, PCB assemblers based in the US and Europe have fewer advantages in price than those from populated developing countries, with China as an example. As selecting an ideal fit PCB assembler is such an advanced process, striving for under one or a pair of these aspects is just unilateral, you must consider them comprehensively.
2. Consider producing PCBs in panels
If there’s a large production requirement, then paneling the PCBs is a wonderful idea to scale back the value and increase the assembly efficiency. Fiducial markers assist with the proper orientation during the pick and place stage of the mechanical system. PCB Panels reduce the assembly run cost drastically.
3. Create an efficient Bill of Materials
A BOM is employed for component procurement and planning and tracking the inventory. An efficient BOM includes all the mandatory data like the Manufacturer’s Part number, quantity, alternate part details, reference designators, etc. Which may save plenty of assembly costs by placing bulk orders. BOM also highlights each component’s interval and lifecycle status, averting delays and reducing production costs.
4. Make Components Sourcing Clear
If you’re with a corporation of small size, it’s hard to manage your budget and project schedule. Under this circumstance, depending upon the PCB assembler will make more sense. Record PCB assemblers are more likely to own friendships with franchised component distributors thanks to their long-term cooperation. They’ll get your demanded components from those distributors at wholesale price, which is way not up to the retail price. To gauge a PCB assembler having genuine cooperation with the franchised component distributor, you will raise their purchase invoice from distributors.
5. Highlight the significance of inspection
Inspection of the bare circuit card is one of the key points to scaling back the assembly cost. The manual inspection covers basic checks like PCB thickness, the surface finish of the PCB, board warpage, etc. Automated visual checks can examine for track smalls or opens, missing parts, and other faults. Catching flaws within the initial stage can save plenty of debugging time. Detailed Bare board inspection before mounting the components could be a good consideration for reducing the assembly cost.
