I will give some pointers about avoiding costly errors while running sample product and PCB manufacturing and how to minimize time to market for new electronic products.
After you have the design for a new product, you want to manufacture a few samples. This will make certain that your device will meet the performance criteria. Simulating the behavior of your product is often done before starting to build prototypes. Common design software such as PCB and industrial design packages will allow you to simulate different performance aspects including electrical, mechanical and thermal performance. Doing a simulation allows reducing the number of design errors before the initial prototype is built.
Picking a modular design in which every module consists of particular key features will simplify the optimization of your prototype by allowing you to swap individual modules that do not meet your performance as opposed to rebuilding the entire design. Replacing a single module will be fairly cost effective. Additionally, reliability classification of modules will be faster than characterizing the complete design.
PCB components are normally mounted by hand throughout the sample phase even though this method is time consuming. To get better-quality boards and to avoid problems with particular components which are difficult to mount consider outsourcing the prototype manufacturing. That might also save you some time.
To assemble circuit boards, your vendor has to prepare the production line for your board. This step is relatively time consuming in comparison to the manufacturing time in case of prototype runs. Thus you should look for a vendor with a fairly small setup expense because this expense is going to be the majority of the prototyping expense. To reduce setup cost of PCB sample manufacturing, suppliers will combine boards from a number of clients. This will distribute the setup cost amongst numerous customers. Consequently, you will only have a limited choice of PCB materials and thicknesses.
Attempt to choose a supplier that not only has low setup costs but also can do full-quantity production runs. Specialized sample assemblers might not be prepared to take on larger quantity manufacturing. This has the advantage of simplifying the migration between sample and final product. Your vendor can then very easily reuse your translated design data. This may not be the case if you are changing vendors. Also, chances are that your new vendor will interpret some data in a different way which will risk reliability of the final product.
Various PCB suppliers also offer PCB design services which is a huge plus in case you don’t have experience with the design. In addition, these suppliers will be able to assist you in case there are problems with your design data and be capable to find problems before the production.
One problem with small-quantity production runs is purchasing of PCB components. Many components suppliers will charge freight fees and have minimum order quantity requirements for certain parts. In addition, dealing with a small quantity of parts is a problem in case of surface mount assembly because components will be mounted from SMT feeders. If you pick a supplier that has inventory of normally used SMT parts which you can order, you can save a lot of time. In addition, you won’t squander any components which are left over.
If you selected a supplier that also does the finished product manufacturing, you will not only reduce time to market but also make certain that circuit boards that are found to be faulty during the final inspection will be fixed much more quickly. Lastly, ensure that you are capable to without problems converse with your supplier. This will help avoid costly mistakes and shorten manufacturing preparation times throughout all steps of PCB manufacture, PCB assembly and final product assembly.