Expedited SMT Service with 24-Hour Turnaround
Product development runs to a calendar in which a day matters. A prototype that is verified a day later moves the launch date, and projects are frequently stuck waiting for a handful of assembled boards. What those projects need is not a promise to hurry but a production system that can genuinely take a set of material and return assembled boards within a day, without the quality checks being quietly dropped along the way.
What the Service Is For
The requests that arrive are predictable. A new design needs its first assembled boards so that the function can be verified. A demonstration unit has to be ready for an exhibition and the date will not move. A customer asks for samples earlier than agreed, or a prototype shows a problem and the corrected board has to be assembled again quickly. A small order is brought forward and a batch has to be produced to meet a delivery commitment.
Our expedited SMT work is aimed at exactly those cases, and it runs on the same thirty six SMT lines and the same fifteen thousand square metres of floor space as the standard work, using the same equipment and the same inspection. The difference is in the scheduling and in the way the steps are connected, not in the standard applied.
The Capability Behind the Promise
The fastest route reaches a 24-hour turnaround once the material is complete, with three to five days as the ordinary expedited figure. Placements support 01005 components and ball grid arrays at a pitch down to nought point three millimetres, the printers are fully automatic and the placement machines are multi function. SPI paste inspection, optical inspection and X-ray are all available, and the quantities covered run from a few boards to a few thousand. An engineering team works in shifts around the clock, which is what allows a question that arrives in the evening to be answered rather than waiting for the morning.
How a Day Is Actually Spent
A twenty four hour build is not simply a normal order performed faster. It is a sequence in which each stage has a defined window, and the estimate is credible only because the windows are known.
The first two hours cover the engineering data. The Gerber data, the bill of materials and the coordinate file are checked for manufacturability, and the stencil design and the placement programme are prepared in parallel rather than one after the other.
The next window covers the material and the stencil. The bill of materials is matched against what has arrived, the parts that are in stock are drawn from store, and the stencil is either made or brought out of the rack. A stencil that already exists removes several hours from the schedule, which is one reason a repeat order is faster than a first one.
The middle of the day belongs to the line. The reel positions are loaded, the paste deposit is measured, and the automatic placement runs at the machine speed, which reaches tens of thousands of placements an hour on a board with few points.
Reflow and inspection follow. The joints are examined by the optical system, and any ball grid array or bottom terminated device is examined by X-ray according to the requirement. The last window covers the through hole work where there is any, the final inspection, the packing and the handover to the courier.
Inspection Is Not Shortened
A common assumption is that an expedited order must have been pushed through by cutting the checks. Ours are not. The paste deposit is measured in three dimensions after printing, with the thickness, the shape and the offset quantified, so that a short deposit, a bridge or an offset is corrected at the printing stage rather than found after reflow.
After reflow every board passes optical inspection, which finds the wrong part, the offset, the tombstone, the short and the bridge with a lower escape rate than a visual check by a person can achieve. Where the board carries a ball grid array or a quad flat no lead device, X-ray covers the joints that cannot be seen from the surface.
The first article is built before the batch in every case. The programme and the material are confirmed on that board before the rest of the run continues, and the small delay it costs is the reason a batch does not have to be built twice. Cutting it would make the schedule look better and the delivery worse.
What Decides Whether the Date Can Be Met
The largest single factor is the completeness of the material. A line cannot start without it, and no amount of scheduling recovers the time lost waiting for a part. The second factor is the number of different part types, because each additional type adds loading and first article time. The number of placements on each board matters for longer runs and much less for a small prototype batch.
Special processes add time of their own. A ball grid array, a package on package or a 01005 population needs additional inspection, so telling the factory about those devices in advance allows the corresponding stage to be reserved. Whether a stencil has to be made decides whether four to eight hours are spent on it. The quantity of boards determines the placement and inspection time, and small batches are naturally the most efficient for this kind of service.
The premise is always the same: complete material and complete data. Where the material is not complete, the honest answer is the date on which it will be, and the alternative is to have the factory purchase it against the bill of materials so that the stock and the supply channels can be used to close the gap. Resistors, capacitors and common integrated circuits can usually be obtained quickly, while a rare or long lead time part sets the limit.
Working With Fabrication and Design
The same group also produces the bare board and does the design work. Where the board itself does not exist yet, fabrication and assembly can be planned as one sequence, with the boards going straight to the assembly line rather than being packed, shipped and unpacked in between. Removing that step removes both the time and the handling.
Our rapid PCBA prototyping route is built for this kind of schedule, PCB manufacturing supplies the boards, and the placement and inspection run under the same quality management system as every other order.
FAQ
Is twenty four hours always possible? It is achievable for a prototype with complete data, complete material, a modest number of part types and no unusual process. Anything else is quoted on its own merits and will still be faster than the standard route.
Is the quality lower on an expedited order? No. The order is scheduled ahead of others and the steps are connected more tightly; the process standards and the inspection stages are identical.
What does an expedited order cost? A percentage is added to the standard charge, and the percentage reflects the level of priority. The figure is confirmed with the quotation rather than adjusted after the work has begun.
