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Manufacturing electronic product prototypes comprises PCB design and PCB assembly and is an important step when launching new products. Based on how far evolved your design is, there is a high danger of costly mistakes. I will give some advice about avoiding frequent errors and how to decrease time to market and expense when manufacturing samples.
After you have the design for a new product, you want to manufacture a number of samples. This will ensure that your device will meet the reliability criteria. Simulating the behavior of your product is frequently completed before starting to manufacture prototypes. Customary design software including PCB and industrial design packages will allow you to simulate various performance aspects such as electrical, mechanical and thermal performance. Running simulations will take some extra time. Then again, the results normally will uncover mistakes in your design. Minimizing the amount of mistakes in your design will simplify attaining the required reliability of your prototypes more quickly and in the end save you time.
One strategy to speed up sample optimization is working with a modular design. A modular design will concentrate key features of your design in certain parts which are exchangeable. During your prototype optimization you can then rebuild individual modules that do not yet meet your performance requirements instead of having to rebuild your whole design. Spinning separate modules will be faster and more cost effective than spinning a whole design.
Depending on the design difficulty, you could think about manually mounting PCB components to save cost. Then again, for average to large complexity this option tends to be particularly time consuming, particularly if you want to build more than a few samples. Thus it makes sense considering a contract manufacturer for the assembly.
When running small-quantity manufacturing runs, the production setup cost will usually dominate the total sample manufacture expense. When looking for a subcontractor, it is best to pick a supplier which specializes in sample builds to reduce the expense. Prototype PCB vendors generally combine the circuit boards of numerous customers which essentially shares the setup expense amongst several customers. The downside is that you will normally only be able to select amongst several normal PCB material thicknesses and sizes.
Seek to pick a manufacturer that not only has small setup costs but also can do full-quantity manufacturing runs. Specialized sample assemblers may not be equipped to handle larger volume manufacturing. This has the advantage of simplifying the migration between sample and finished product. This way your design is already translated into the specific machine data which means little or no setup cost for your finished manufacturing.
Several PCB manufacturers also offer PCB design services which is a huge plus in case you don’t have experience with the design. In addition, these vendors will be able to aid you in case there are problems with your design files and be capable to discover problems before the manufacturing.
Component sourcing is a major concern when assembling samples as a result of the low volume and the ship expense and minimum order quantity requirements of some vendors. SMT components are mounted by mounting them as tape in feeders. Assembling small quantities of parts however is a challenge since they do not mount in a feeder. Some suppliers carry stock of commonly utilized SMT parts which you can purchase which will save you the time of purchasing these components yourself and also eliminates wasting unused parts.
It is wise to select a supplier that also can do the assembly and inspecting of the finished products. This will save a lot of time during the assembly. Also, defective-product circuit boards can be fixed in house. Make certain you can easily and effectively communicate with your vendor. Also, ensure that your supplier can identify with your concerns. This ability will be key in eliminating costly delays and errors of the PCB assembly and final product assembly.






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