Precise Placement

The main benefit of the pick and place machine is its ability to place components onto the board to the exact millimeter needed. A large issue that holds back old PCBs is the inability to place components close together, as people once assembled PCBs by hand. These PCB component placement machines use the space of the PCB more efficiently, making it more cost-effective and decreasing the size of a PCB.

Fast Construction

Pick and place machines are great for their ability to produce PCBs quickly. As the process is mostly mechanical, the production speed of a PCB doesn’t vary, and each PCB is quicker to produce. This speeds up the production of all electronic devices and lowers the production cost in comparison to human production.

Automated Assembly

These machines are also automatic, making it easy to feed the machine materials as it continuously produces the circuit boards you need. This automation makes it much more productive than any other PCB assembly and saves you a lot of resources over time.

Increased Design Possibility

Thanks to the increase in cost-effective production and better PCB space usage, the pick and place machine helps designers create better PCBs. The extra space you save can be useful for designing more powerful PCBs at lower costs. These machines often come with PCB design programming to help manage and create the exact PCB you might need.

This is the purpose of a pick and place machine in PCB assembly—to help create and produce powerful and cost-efficient PCBs easily. Making higher-level PCBs that weren’t possible with past technologies is the overarching goal of a pick and place machine in PCB assembly.

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Substrate

When considering materials, start by looking at the four layers of a PCB. The substrate holds the PCB together and needs to handle the heat and electricity that runs through the PCB; due to this component’s importance, you should greatly factor it into your decision. A lot of hard PCBs use fiberglass as their substrate materials, while others use flexible plastics.

Laminate

Laminate isolates and separates signals between PCB layers and the outside. A lot of PCBs laminate copper to the substrate with various heat-resistant materials. You’ll find quite a few options, so choose the one that best fits your PCB’s thermal and electrical needs.

Solder Mask

The solder mask consists of a thin layer of material that helps prevent outside exposure for the PCB’s traces. These are usually made from polymer that stops dust and doesn’t inhibit electrical signals. Several epoxies and photo-imageable solder mask options suit different needs, making this component an important material to consider.

Silkscreen

When you need to place the PCB’s components the right way, the silkscreen layer provides a handy solution. This material is an epoxy layout that plans where the components of the PCB will sit. This layer can also double as writing on the PCB, helping to label parts and add any additional information someone might need about the PCB.

As you can see, you can choose from a variety of materials, and using this guide on how to select the right PCB materials will help you learn what you need to focus on. You can also get a lot of help by using prototype PCB assembly services that assist you when you make your PCB. Just remember that each part accomplishes different things; if you keep those unique goals in mind, you’ll craft a great PCB.

The post How To Select the Right PCB Materials: A Guide appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.

Factors

PCBs have multiple factors that affect their thickness, and each is something important to consider when designing one for your use. The size of the copper is a big thing to consider, as it controls the signal’s strength and reliability and can overheat if made too small. The other materials to make the layers of PCB can also greatly affect the thickness of the board. Also, the number of layers has a large impact on the size of the PCB and the required size of the parts in the PCB.

Why PCB Thickness Matters

There are many things to consider when deciding what the thickness should be on your custom PCB prototypes. Thinner electronics are becoming more popular as time goes on, raising the demand for thinner PCBs. However, this leaves the PCB in a more fragile state and can lead to damaging the electronics. Larger PCBs can usually handle a bit more while being harder to damage but they increase the weight and take up more room in the electronics. You should also consider the cost to produce PCBs of different sizes. Although a PCB can vary in size quite a bit, there is a standard size of about 1.57 mm. This means that when ordering a custom PCB, it can cost more if you do not use the standard thickness, as it requires more work to change the size.

Now that you know how to choose the right thickness for your PCB prototype and can make informed decisions, it is time to start trying your designs. We here at PCB Unlimited are more than capable of helping you build the PCB that you need—no matter the thickness.

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With technology ever expanding, it then becomes an issue of balancing out new technology with inexpensive means. If we are ever to keep up, we need to find a way to make the parts quicker and cheaper, so that prototype PCBs can continue to be used.

3D printing is a massive industry nowadays. With huge varieties of items able to be printed directly off of the computer at a fraction of what it would usually cost, it’s easy to see why. Currently, in France, it’s been reported that Schneider Electric has begun to incorporate 3D printing across its manufacturing systems. So what does this mean for prototype printed circuit boards?

Well, with around $43.4 billion in revenue accumulated in 2013 from circuit board and electronic component manufacturing in the United States, in means the cost-effective means of printing out prototype circuit boards can only increase that revenue gained substantially. With the use of this technology, PCB assembly will be the easiest it’s ever been. It will first save time, as the delicate and pinpoint accuracy of needing to get every tiny puzzle piece of a printed circuit board down can now be done with a precision machine. This will not only create functioning prototype circuit boards more easily, it will also assemble at an incredibly faster rate.

In addition to that, the savings made from transitioning to 3D printing will be astronomical. It saves time to assemble, which in itself saves money. And the material used to create circuit boards can be better utilized in a machine, thus preventing waste. While the material used to create the prototype circuit boards will remain the same, and thus not provide lower costs, the time saved mass producing them is enough to create a vast difference in savings

In the world we live in, we are always looking to produce things faster, better and cheaper than what we produced yesterday. The endless amounts of uses a simple 3D printer has on countless industries makes it hard not to want to go out and grab one right away.

For more information on prototype circuit boards, visit pcbunlimited.com

The post Print Out The Circuit Board! How 3D Printing Can Cut Costs on PCB Assembly appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.

Are you a prototype printed circuit board enthusiast? If you are looking to develop your hobby a little bit more, it is incredibly important that you know the basics of prototype PCB assembly. Here we give an overview of the entire process.

Before we go into detail, it is important to understand that with these steps, it is assumed that surface mount technology (SMT) is used for the application of all mount components. Even though both rigid and flexible printed circuit boards have been common since the development of the Auto-Sembly process back in the mid-1950s, the PCB industry has mostly changed their fabrication methods to SMT.

Number one: Solder Paste
Before any components can be added to the board, the engineer must add a layer of solder paste. The idea is pretty simple; the solder paste is applied to component pads, and the application itself is made possible with a solder screen. Once the screen is placed on the board, the engineer will squeeze small amounts of the solder through the holes on the screen, ensuring that the solder only touches the component pads. However, this can be tricky because the exact same amount of solder must be on each pad.

Number two: Pick and Place
Once the solder is dry and secure, the proper components are then picked out and placed into their position on the PCB. There is enough tension from the solder paste to keep them secure until the engineer jolts the board, but sometimes, small dots of glue can be used as a backup.

Number three: Soldering
When everything is placed where it should be, the board will then go through the soldering machine.

Number four: Inspection
This may be the most important step in PCB assembly. The engineer will manually go through each board to ensure all of the joints and components are where they need to be and are in working order.

Number five: Test
At this point, it is time to have fun with your board and test it!

With these tips in mind, you are on your way to creating an impressive prototype circuit board that you will want to show off.

The post A Quick Intro Guide to the PCB Assembly Process appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.

In recent years, 3D printing has become all the rage. The ability to print anything from trinkets to writing instruments and cutlery has grabbed the eyes of both technology enthusiasts and beginners alike. Not only is the ability to print something in 3D incredibly impressive, the fact that you can use it almost immediately makes this technology so admirable.

But how do electronics fit into the 3D craze? It turns out that 3D printed prototype circuit boards are still in their infancy and are continuously developing because of the complexity of the process. Not only must the 3D printer be able to conduct electricity, it must also stand up to consistent use. Until they were shut down by Kickstarter, there was only one 3D printer in operation that claimed to be capable of doing this.

So how would circuit boards that are printed via a 3D printer compare to traditional PCBs?

3D

• The 3D process would allow more flexibility for the engineers, meaning they could be a little bit more creative in the assembly process. They would not be restricted to size requirements or circuitry limitations and could work with whatever materials the printer accommodates.
• The products would have a quicker turn around time as manufacturers produce higher quantities easier.
• There would be less risk involved since the engineer could print multiple models before they decide on what one they are going with.

Prototype printed circuit boards

• Prototype PCBs are less expensive to create.
• While they can be more complex, there is also more variety. There are typically three types of printed circuit board construction — single-sided, double-sided, and multi-layered.
• They are easier to learn and are the same all over the world.

While 3D printed circuit boards seem like a great idea, their future looks bleak at this time. For the very best in prototype printed circuit board construction, contact PCB Unlimited today.

The post The Myth of the 3D Printed Circuit Board appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.

However, Chinese engineers have recently come up with a method to finally recycle these components. Researchers at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China have developed a system that grinds used prototype circuit boards and uses a high voltage electric field to separate the metallic materials from the non-metallic ones. At the end of their journey, the PCBs are pulverized to less than 1mm in diameter.

Once the metals are ground up, the metals can be recovered by a fractional distillation vacuum. The non-metal parts are then compressed into plaques to be used as construction material. Their goal is to prevent toxic fumes from entering into the atmosphere as melted copper — an ingredient present in many PCBs — emits toxic fumes when it melts.

The researchers tested their technique with over 880 pounds of prototype PCBs that were collected around the country from household waste.

China isn’t the only country to develop exciting new recycling practices for circuit boards. Researchers at Scotland’sEdinburgh University have also come up with a way of recycling the metal components on prototype PCBs, but they are focusing on gold.

Generally, certain areas on a circuit board may be gold plated for use as contact pads or as a ROHS-compliant board finish. On an average PCB there is normally only a thin gold plating, however, thicker gold plating is required for larger, 50um contact boards.

In fact, as much as 7% of the world’s gold can be found in printed circuit boards, so the Edinburgh engineers have developed a simple extraction method with hopes of salvaging up to 300 tons of this valuable material.

The process is simple. The PCB is placed in a mild acid, which will dissolve their metal parts. Then a toluene solvent is added to the mix, which extracts gold from the mixture. This process is seen as a success as it does not use the harsh chemicals that are found in current methods.

So the next time you have a circuit board, consider going to lengths to recycle it. Mother nature will thank you.

The post Scottish and Chinese Researchers Discover New Ways to Recycle Prototype Circuit Boards appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.

Placing components
There are three major types of prototype PCBs, single-sided, double-sided, and multi-layered. Each type of board has different rules for each of their components, but as a rule of thumb it is always a good idea to place parts on the top side of the board. It is important to place all components in their specific locations, including switch connectors, LED, mounting holes, or heat sinks.

The goal is to minimize trace lengths between components to make sure the prototype printed circuit boards do not short circuit. Simply put parts that connect to each other next to one another, and it will be easier to lay the traces down the road.

ICs should only be placed on the board in one position, either up and down or left to right. Doing more than this can cause confusion in the board’s circuitry. You will also save a lot of time if you leave plenty of room between these components, as the tracing lines must go between them.

When you are done properly placing all of the components, print a copy of the layout and place it over the prototype circuit board. This way you can check to make sure there is enough space for each component without them touching each other, and then you can complete the soldering process.

Placing ground and power traces
After soldering the components the next step is to lay the power and ground traces. The power and ground lines are essential when working with the IC as they will connect to common rails for each supply. This is a way to avoid daisy-chaining power lines from part-to-part.

Placing signal traces
The goal here is to make the signal traces as short and as direct as possible. Feed through holes, called vias, are able to move signals from one layer to the other, so use these to your advantage. Also, traces that carry a larger current should be wider than any other signal traces to prevent short-circuiting.

PCB fabrication is meant to be fun. So follow these tips to discover the world of printed circuit boards for the first time!

The post Easy PCB Assembly Tips and Tricks That Will Help Any Beginner appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.

If you are in the market for circuit board prototypes, then you most likely are already aware that there are many different manufacturers to choose from offering different PCB services. So if you are not exactly sure on what to look for when it comes to PCB manufacturers, follow this list to make the most educated choice possible.

1. Experience in the industry

Before anything else, it is important to find a manufacturer that has experience in circuit board prototyping, prototype PCB assembly, and the differences between PCB layouts. Look for a company with extensive history in the electronics business, as they will be well established and extremely knowledgeable.

2. The ability to design

The company that you choose should be able to help you throughout the design process of prototype PCB assembly. No matter if you are starting from scratch, or need a new pair of eyes to double check your work, your manufacturing company should be willing to help you out in all the details of fabrication.

3. They have up to date and advanced technologies

The tools and technologies your PCB provider uses is important in order for your finished product to stay relevant and up to date. For example, there are two forms of construction processes in prototype PCB assembly, surface mount construction and through the hole. So at the very least, the company you choose should have all relevant machinery needed for these techniques.

4. Industry compliance

Above everything else, the manufacturers should be compliant with all industry standards. Not only should they follow industry standards on manufacturing and design regulations, but they should be able to easily fit into your high standards for production.

Stay tuned for our next piece, What to Look for in a PCB Manufacturer: Part 2!

The post What to Look for in a PCB Manufacturer: Part 1 appeared first on Blog PCB Unlimited.