Custom pcb for your circuit board design

You have chosen Custom PCB for your PCB design. Rather than buying ready-made electronic products. But what is the next step?

This decision is likely to be based on workload. Although the benefits of Custom PCB work are greater, the following are some considerations for the cost-benefit ratio of Custom PCB and standard PCB.

What are the factors that affect the cost of Custom PCB?

If you decide to outsource Custom PCB to iPCB. In addition to transportation and other factors other than production, your Custom PCB cost will depend on:

iPCB cooperates with customers to formulate the scope of work according to the required specifications and quote the project cost to help achieve the design requirements. The experienced design team of iPCB should be able to inform you where your concept may be lacking in design for manufacturability.

PCB schematic design

PCB schematic design is to realize the functions required by the circuit designer according to the circuit schematic diagram. PCB design mainly refers to layout design, which needs to consider the layout of external connections. Optimized layout of internal electronic components, the optimized layout of metal wires and through holes, electromagnetic protection, heat dissipation, and other factors. Excellent PCB design can save PCB production costs and obtain good circuit performance and heat dissipation performance.

PCB Layout

As a part of hardware design, PCB layout is also a very important part; When the hardware circuit design is reasonable, it is an absolutely important index affecting the performance.

PCB prototype fabrication

PCB prototypes fabrication by iPCB include:

Rogers PCB series, Arlon PCB series, Taconic PCB series, nelco PCB series, Isola PCB (Isola 370hr, Isola fr408) and polytetrafluoroethylene PCB, PTFE PCB, Ceramic PCB, hydrocarbon PCB, hybrid PCB, IC substrate, IC test board, and high- speed PCB.

PCB prototype manufacturing capability of ipcb:

PCB thickness: 0.10-8.0mm (1 and 2 layers) 0.15-8.0mm (multiple layers), minimum finished board size: 0.5*1.0mm, high frequency mixing pressure layer:4-32 layers. For details, please click technical capability of high-frequency mixing board.

Before delivering it to production (waiting for customer approval), the engineers built a prototype to solve any problems in the design.

Once the bill of materials is developed from the design, the prototype is referenced. However, some customers have already completed the design and only need the contract manufacturer to assemble the prototype, so this will be the first step.

PCB custom testing

iPCB works with customers to test products and designs customized functional test fixtures and procedures when needed. Depending on your project and industry, Circuit Board may has to meet certain requirements, such as RoHS or IPC 6011.

Some customers may have developed their own testing procedures and require iPCB to follow and implement their requirements throughout the testing process. Then, iPCB provides conformity certification along with the product.

how to make a custom PCB?

Although there are many ways to make and process PCB, traditional fast custom PCB methods can be divided into two main categories: physical and chemical methods:

Physical method custom PCB: Manually engrave unwanted copper on the PCB board by using a variety of knives and electrical tools.

Chemical method custom PCB: Corrosion of unnecessary copper in corrosive solutions by covering a blank copper-clad sheet is currently used by most developers. There are many methods to cover the protective layer, such as the most traditional hand-painted method, sticking custom dry glue method, film photosensitive method, and heat transfer printing PCB board method developed in recent years.

Hand painted: Draw the line shape manually with a brush or a hard pen on the blank copper-clad sheet. After drying, it can be put into the solution and corroded directly.

Sticking stickers: On the market, various kinds of stickers are made into strips and discs, and different stickers are combined on the blank circuit board to corrode if needed.

Film Sensitivity: Print the PCB circuit board drawing on the film by a laser printer, pre-coat the blank copper-clad with a layer of sensitive material (already coated copper clad for sale on the market), and corrode in the solution after exposure, development, fixing and cleaning in a dark room.

Thermal transfer: Print the line directly on a blank circuit board through a thermal transfer printer and put it in corrosive liquid to corrode.

Both methods of fast custom PCB have their own advantages and disadvantages:

Physical method custom PCB: This method is more laborious and less accurate, and only relatively simple lines can be used. The main drawbacks are time-consuming, difficult to control accuracy, and non-recoverable, which require a high degree of operation and have been rarely used.

Chemical method custom PCB: The process is relatively complex, but the accuracy can be controlled. It is currently the most widely used rapid plate-making method, but there are still many problems.

1. Printing accuracy depends on the accuracy of the printer cartridge used. Printers with poor performance print out uneven lines, which can easily cause broken lines and adhesion during corrosion.

2. Exposure and development time of photosensitive plates are not easy to control, and the best exposure time of each batch of plates will vary, which requires repeated experiments to master.

3. It is difficult to control the corrosion process: It is impossible to equip a single plate with professional control equipment for mass production in the circuit board factory. The temperature, concentration and acidity and alkalinity of the corrosive solution will have a greater impact on the quality of the corrosion. To make a good circuit board, you must have a lot of experience. Otherwise, material scrap is very serious.

4. Photosensitive plates are highly environmental-friendly and must be stored in full black and low-temperature conditions. Exposure must also be carried out in darkroom conditions.

5. Silver salts (photosensitive materials) and copper salts (corrosion products) are both toxic. Care should be taken during the process of corrosion. It is difficult to clean if people or clothes are touched with them. Due to environmental reasons, it is more difficult to dispose of the waste liquid after corrosion.

6. Etched finished boards must be manually worked, but it is difficult to control the accuracy of manually punched boards.

Therefore, it is concluded that the traditional physical custom PCB method is labor-consuming, time-consuming, and low accuracy, while the chemical fast custom PCB method is a controllable inaccuracy, but the process is complex and not conducive to environmental protection. Neither physical method nor chemical method requires a high level of operational skills, so neither is a good way to help engineers achieve "fast" stenciling.

Now electronic products are becoming smaller and smaller, PCB board is becoming more sophisticated, and tolerances using the original custom PCB printer method can not meet the requirements. IPCB is a professional custom PCB production factory. Products include custom PCB board, custom keyboard PCB, custom led PCB board, custom PCB board assembly. Give customers cheap custom PCB, If you need to buy a custom PCB board, please contact IPCB, which gives you the best custom PCB.

Custom PCBA manufacturing

iPCB sets up a dedicated engineering team for custom PCBA manufacturing and works closely with your team before starting production. Before manufacturing, conduct a "PCB manufacturing design" and new product launch meeting to review all processes.

Then it's offline!

Outsourcing Custom PCB not only allows you to test in accordance with more stringent standards but also gives you the opportunity to create a circuit board that matches your design instead of matching your design to a prefabricated circuit board.

The development trend of electronic products is that customers hope to obtain customized products tailored to individual needs. This can be through a fully customized product or a semi-custom product built from the ground up that adds or changes features and components on a mass-produced project. An example of a semi-custom product is a digital camera, which can be modified with new hardware or software. In order to support this new feature, equipment manufacturers need to maintain flexibility in the design and manufacturing process, especially in Custom PCB. Although it may take a longer production time to provide customized versions of products, Custom PCB can also increase competitiveness and bring more business.

When your customers or customers request customized products or change your existing products, your team needs to ensure that you can deliver. Custom PCBs that can be designed to be used and added can help you reduce production costs without sacrificing custom options that are welcomed by the audience. Using the largest component library when designing PCBs can integrate the functions and options of your products and applications to a new level.

Who needs a Custom PCB board?

If you don’t have design and engineering capabilities in-house, a full-service electronic contract manufacturer (iPCB) can put its engineering staff into production. Custom PCB can also help with further development to test at the board level and test the box as needed Built function.

If you already have a custom design, iPCB can use its manufacturing and assembly skills. iPCB uses a variety of test methods to test PCBs and components and conforms to industry standards.

Is Custom PCB right for you?

In short, your needs for a Custom PCB board will depend on the budget and complexity of your project, as well as your commitment to quality.

To determine whether the quantity of your product is worth the cost of Custom PCB, please cooperate with iPCB, iPCB can provide in-depth benefit comparison and CustomPCB cost calculation for your review.