PCB Prototyping
PCB Prototyping is the most important step for any electronic hardware design engineer in electronic products, and also the beginning of all electronic products.
Why We Need Prototyping
From design to finished electronic products, gadgets, smartphones, home appliances or electrical appliances, and so on, all electronic products and equipment you can see. PCB circuit board samples are very important. It allows testing a given design to determine whether it is effective. In this way, any errors can be debugged and corrected. This is also very useful before mass production. Without PCB Prototype, there are still risks in the mass production of electronic circuit boards and related products.
In complex circuit boards, minor errors can be very expensive and time-consuming, and difficult to correct. The wrong design can make the soldering of electronic components very difficult. Pointing out the wrong points on the circuit board also becomes more difficult. Therefore, it is wise to design the PCB circuit board sample proofing before actual production to avoid any future risks.
Highfive rigid-flex PCB Prototyping
Okay, now let me introduce to you what is a printed circuit board (Printed circuit board)?
Most electronic equipment and products have PCB circuit boards. Printed circuit boards (PCB/PWB) are boards made of non-insulating and highly heat-resistant insulating materials (such as fiberglass). These boards are also called substrates. A PCB substrate can have only a single layer (single-layer circuit board) or more than one layer (multi-layer circuit board). Conductive metals such as copper are used to make conductive paths or traces to facilitate current flow. Once the PCB is soldered, it is called a “printed circuit board”. After soldering electronic components, the same PCB is called a semi-finished printed circuit board (PCBA).
PCB Prototyping Schematic
When designing a new circuit, it is very important to draw a schematic diagram of the circuit board before the PCB circuit board proofs. The schematic diagram of the circuit board will help debug and fix any errors that occur during this process. If the circuit on the circuit board is simple, you can use a very simple and easy-to-understand sample board. In the case of complex and customized circuit boards, it is necessary to make sample PCBs.
PCB Prototyping Layout
To start making PCB circuit board samples, you need circuit board manufacturing data such as Gerber files. PCB layout software can be used for this purpose. A circuit board layout software draws the layout of the circuit board and all traces and points out that the electronic components will be soldered on the circuit board. The PCB layout looks like a diagram. PCB layout software allows editing the layout until the desired layout is achieved.
Manufacturing of PCB Prototyping involves several complicated processes
1: Film exposure: In this process, the mask or photomask is combined with chemical etching to subtract the copper area from the PCB circuit board substrate. Use the CAD PCB software program to create the photomask using the photoplotter design. The photomask was also created using a laser printer.
2: Laminating: Multi-layer PCB circuit boards are composed of multiple thin layers of etched boards or trace layers, which are glued together through a lamination process.
3: Drilling: Each layer of the PCB circuit board needs the ability to connect one layer to another; this is achieved by drilling a small hole called “VIAS”. Drilling is mainly done by using an automatic computer-driven drilling machine.
4: Solder pad spray tin: spray tin or chemical immersion gold on the solder joints of the electronic components on the solder pads on the PCB circuit board to solder the electronic components. Bare copper is not easy to solder. It requires the surface to be plated with materials that facilitate welding. Earlier lead-based tin was used for plating surfaces, but with R oHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) compliance, newer lead-free materials such as nickel and gold are now used for plating.
5: Test the PCB circuit board: Before soldering the electronic components to the PCB circuit board, it needs to be tested. The test can use a test rack tester or flying probe test, which is a circuit board test equipment operated by other computers.
Whether it is PCB circuit board proofing or batch manufacturing, the manufacturing process and process procedures are similar, but the cost of manufacturing PCB circuit board samples is different from the pre-tool cost allocated during batch manufacturing.
Key Points to note for PCB Prototyping
When manufacturing PCB proofing, it is very important to follow the rules from the film plate making to testing. Any slight error may make the PCB circuit board useless. In the case of mass production, PCB sample proofing is necessary.
Of course, it is also very important to find a good PCB proofing supplier. We are a professional manufacturer of multi-layer PCB proofing, 1-30+ layers, HDI boards, impedance boards, Rogers boards, thick copper foil boards, soft Hard bond boards, metal substrates, and another complex, special processes, special materials PCB circuit board proofing, mass production. In addition, smt patch processing, SMT patch proofing, dip plug-in welding, testing, maintenance, BGA ball replanting, PCB design, hardware design, software programming, PCB copy board, etc. provide one-stop services around PCBA.
You can get more details as you CONTACTS us now, or you can visit our HIEDESIGN for PCB Design.