Small Batch PCBA Builds: Import, First Article, Release A small batch of a few dozen to a few hundred boards is a rehearsal for volume, and it deserves the same preparation. The quantity is smaller but the tooling is not: a stencil, a placement programme, a first article and an…

Firmware Programming and Functional Test on PCBA On a board that carries a microcontroller, the assembly is not finished when the last joint has been reflowed. The device still has to be programmed, and the product it forms still has to be verified — and both of those steps depend…

Consigned Material SMT Assembly: Preparing the Parts In consigned material assembly the customer buys the parts and the factory provides the process. It is the natural arrangement for a company that already has reliable supply channels, or for a product whose main controller must come from a specified source, and…

Complete Unit Assembly: From PCBA to Finished Product Building the board and building the product are two different jobs, and the gap between them is where many schedules are lost. Once the assembly has been tested, the enclosure, the harness, the display, the keys and the fasteners still have to…

PCBA Batch Traceability: Records and Packaging Delivery Traceability stops being a formality once an order is built in volume. A prototype batch can be inspected board by board when something goes wrong, but a production order can span several PCB batches, several component lots and several production dates, and without…

Mixed Technology PCBA: Planning Through-Hole Insertion A board that carries both surface mount and pin-in-hole components is assembled in two stages, and the second stage is where most of the scheduling difficulty lives. The mixed technology process places and reflows the surface mount devices first, then adds the parts that…

QFN Soldering and BGA Placement: Control Before Inspection On a board using QFN soldering and BGA placement, most of the joints are underneath the component and cannot be seen after reflow. That single fact changes the shape of the process. Quality cannot be inspected into the assembly at the end,…

Three-Stage Design Review Before Gerber Release A layout error is one of the few engineering mistakes that cannot be corrected in software. A trace that carries the wrong net, a via placed where it destroys a return path or a footprint that does not match its component all leave the…

SMT Assembly Quoting: Placement Points, Setup and Tiers Almost every placement point price in electronics assembly is quoted the same way on the surface and built differently underneath. Two factories can quote within a few per cent of each other per point and return totals that differ by a wide…

Judging a High Layer Count PCB Quote: What to Compare A fabrication quote for a complex board is easy to compare badly. Two suppliers can return figures that differ by a factor of two for the same Gerber set, and the difference usually sits in what each of them assumes…