Manufacturing electronic product samples consists of PCB design and PCB assembly and is an important step when launching new products. Depending on how far evolved your design is, there is a high danger of costly errors. I will give some advice about avoiding frequent mistakes and how to reduce time to market and cost when making prototypes.
Producing of samples is the first step of a new product launch and is typically done following simulation of product performance by employing the simulation capabilities of PCB and industrial design software. Doing a simulation permits minimizing the number of design mistakes before the first prototype is assembled.
One plan to speed up sample optimization is working with a modular design. A modular design will concentrate key functions of your design in certain parts which are interchangeable. Throughout your sample optimization you can then rebuild separate modules which do not yet meet your performance constraints rather than having to rebuild your whole design. When a certain module doesn’t meet the design requirement, it can be replaced relatively quickly. The time advantage at this step is obvious. During the design phase however structuring your design into modules will take extra effort.
Based on the design complexity, you might think about manually assembling PCB components to lower cost. However, for medium to large complexity this option tends to be exceptionally time consuming, particularly if you want to build numerous samples. Therefore it makes sense taking into consideration a contract supplier for the assembly.
You ought to look for a subcontractor that has a small setup expense because this cost is going to dominate the total cost in case of small-quantity runs. To lower setup cost of PCB sample manufacturing, manufacturers will combine boards from a number of customers. This will split the setup expense amongst numerous customers. As a result, you will merely have a limited choice of PCB materials and thicknesses.
Seek to select a supplier that not only has low setup expenses but also can do full-quantity production runs. Specialized sample manufacturers may not be equipped to handle larger quantity manufacturing. This has the advantage of simplifying the migration between sample and final product. If there are no major changes in your design, production can begin rapidly. The manufacturing data are already available in the manufacturer-specific machine format.
A number of PCB vendors also can aid you during the design by providing in-house PCB design. If you are not very experienced in the design, you may want to consider picking such a supplier. Such a vendor can also much more easily and much more quickly resolve design-related difficulties.
A difficulty with small-quantity assembly runs is sourcing of PCB parts. Many components vendors will charge ship fees and have minimum order volume constraints for specific components. SMT parts are mounted by mounting them as tape in feeders. Assembling small quantities of components on the other hand is a problem because they don’t mount in a feeder. Some manufacturers carry stock of commonly utilized SMT parts which you can buy which will save you the time of buying these components yourself and also eliminates wasting unused parts.
It is smart to choose a supplier that also can do the manufacturing and inspecting of the final products. This will save a lot of time during the manufacturing. In addition, defective-product circuit boards can be repaired in house. Decent communications with your manufacturer is essential since it will help avoid expensive delays and errors throughout all steps of the PCB assembly and final product manufacturing.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
0 Comments.