Printed circuit board (PCB) has become a part of most electronic devices today. PCB designers can create impressive boards with many features. Whether you’re a designer creating a circuit board on a personal project or a designer working on a great team, it’s important to get the design right before moving on to manufacturing, and a big part of that process is getting a prototype PCB. At the time of mass production of PCB circuit boards, PCB prototype is required before mass production. Circuit board prototyping is to understand the quality of the product in advance and reduce defective ratio in production, so high quality PCB prototype is an indispensable step.
What is a PCB prototype?
A PCB prototype is the initial implementation of a completed design. After you or your engineer has created a PCB in the design software, it is still theoretical if it has not been tested yet. Although certain software options are available to virtually test the PCB, locate and fix errors. Even if the engineer checks the files, you still want to have a prototype, this will give you a real example of the circuit board that you can use. Allowing you to see how it handles its work after the application, for example, the design may work in theory, but you may find that the enclosure of the electronic device you create does not provide sufficient ventilation, and the circuit board will overheat, you want to see how the board works, and a prototype can do that.
Do you really need a PCB prototype?
You might think that you don’t need a prototype, you want to go into production as soon as possible. However, imagine how much money you could lose if you bought 5,000 boards with the same defects that were detected by PCB prototype. Even though it may take a few days to get a PCB prototype and test it, you’ll still find it well worth it. You don’t want to put any unwelcome errors into production.When creating a PCB, it is important to partner with a manufacturer that can supply you with a small number of boards at a lower cost. What are the most concerned factors of PCB prototype?
PCB prototyping is the best choice to verify the quality and performance of a design before starting a full mass production. It’s very important to work with a reliable prototype manufacturer who can fabricate the sample boards fast and correct, if you need some printed circuit boards. These boards can rapidly test and verify the designs if any mistakes or potentially defects in the early stages of your projects, also order small-quantity prototype runs first is more cost-effective. UETPCB offers quick-turn PCB prototype services for PCB manufacturing and assembly at high quality and low cost.
How to choose a reliable PCB prototyping manufacturer?
1.Speed
In the PCB industry, time is a very important factor. Delivery time and quality are the key points of the factory, also the most favored by the customers. Now PCB prototype factories generally provide expedited fabrication service, such as 12 hours, 24 hours expedited shipment; Usually the normal delivery time of single and double side PCB is 2 days.
2. Quality
For PCB prototyping, quality must not be ignored. From raw materials, layout, to production, testing, quality control, and so on, every step needs to be strictly checked.
3. Price
With the development of the PCB industry, the price of PCB prototype, small and medium batch production is constantly falling. Completing a challenging task with a challenging price will be the price trend of PCB prototype in the future. Take the ordinary double side PCB, the PCB material is generally FR-4, aluminum, CEM-1, PCB thickness from 0.4mm to 3.0m, copper thickness from 0.5oz to 3.0oz, etc.; These materials are different, resulting in a very different price.
Why PCB prototype is important?
Because it can save time, money and energy. When you have a prototype, you will probably go through several different versions of the evaluation board before finding the most effective solution. PCB Prototyping helps ensure that they work in real time and takes the guesswork out of it. You’ll see if they need to be changed, which helps minimize reducing your timeline, which means you can still get to production faster due to fewer problems. Through PCB prototyping, you can improve your design, and if there are mistakes, it’s often easier to see where they are and what to do about them.
This is why the UETPCB provides the option of PCB prototype. Through these runs, the user can perform functional tests and ensure the board is in optimal working condition before proceeding to the final design or adding additional features. It also saves them post-production headaches or even serious component failures.
Then what are the advantages of making a PCB prototype first?
1. judge the production ability of circuit board manufacturers
PCB prototype can judge the production ability of the PCB manufacturer: effective PCB prototyping before the mass production can also clearly understand well for the PCB manufacturer, especially the manufacturer that the two parties have no cooperation before, the PCB manufacturer can be determined through PCB prototype. Only PCB manufacturers with the same capability and able to meet the requirements of processing technology standards can build a long-term cooperation and high-quality production of PCB circuit boards.
2. Reduce the defective rate of PCB mass production
Usually PCB circuit board for a large number, in order to ensure smooth mass production without quality problems and reduce the defect rate, it is very necessary to start the circuit board prototype before production. After all, the processes of PCB production are complex, each procedure or process cannot make mistakes. After a successful PCB prototype, there will be professional technical personnel to carry out effective tests on the samples, after passing various professional tests to determine that there is no problem before mass production.
3. Verify the performance and functional of design
PCB board prototype can also understand the performance and functional response of the new product in advance. Through PCB prototype, we can effectively set up a good foundation for future mass production, and we can calculate the corresponding material cost and optimize the deficiencies in advance. These need to be effectively dealt with in the PCB prototype, in order to reduce all kinds of unprepared problems in mass production.
What if the PCB prototype doesn’t work?
It’s always possible that the PCB prototype won’t work for some reason. If the prototype you get doesn’t work and matches your design, this means that you avoid costly mistakes. Finding errors now ensures that they do not make it to production. Prototyping will reduce production costs because you won’t encounter those errors.It is important to find out all of these issues so that you can make changes now during the prototyping. See any mistakes in your prototype as a way to learn and improve your design. You will find that the more times you design PCBs, the better they become and the fewer errors they produce in the early stages.