Custom PCB

Custom PCB boards are mainly made of four processes: PCB fabrication, PCB assembly, PCB coating, and PCB inspection. PCB coating and inspection are specialized that will be provided by your custom printed circuit board manufacturers. You can select the type, material, and production technology for your unique PCB prototype in the PCB production and assembly process.

There is the basic of the process of PCBs fabrication and assembly:

8 steps of PCB fabrication:

• Step 1: Creating a designed layout on the copper-clad laminate.
• Step 2: PCB manufacturers will etch or remove excess material from inner layers to reveal images and pads.
• Step 3: Laminating printed circuit board materials at high temperatures for creating the PCB layer stack up.
• Step 4: Creating mounting holes, through-hole pins, and vias on PCB.
• Step 5: Etch and remove the excess copper of the surface layer to reveal images and pads.
• Step 6: Placing plating pin holes and via holes.
• Step 7: Creating a protective coating or solder masking on the surface.
• Step 8: Printing silkscreen printing, logos or other markings, and installing polarity indicators on the surface.

5 steps of custom PCB boards assembly:

• Step 1: Adding Solder Paste
• Step 2: Custom PCB Printing pick and Place
• Step 3: Soldering
• Step 4: Inspection
• Step 5: Testing

Material is the second core during the PCB manufacturing process. Custom PCB designers usually have various considerations to ensure the normal function and wear resistance of design custom PCBs. Different electronic products should match different PCBs for the mixture utilization of the PCB function. These factors include dielectric constant, flame retardance, higher glass transition temperatures, mitigated loss factors, thermal performance, dimensional stability, etc.

Therefore, there are some excellent materials that are most popular to use as the material of custom pcb production:

FR4 epoxy laminate and prepreg: Features with good electrical, thermal, and mechanical characteristics, as well as an excellent strength-to-weight ratio, FR4 has become the ideal materials for most electronic applications. This kind of material meets certain requirements of NEMA LI 1-1998 standards. FR4 laminates and prepreg usually used for the custom printed circuit board with lower layer counts generally less than 14 layers.

Polyimide laminates and prepreg: Compare with FR4, the excellent resistance in harsh and higher temperature environments made this kind of custom printed circuit board materials have a higher cost and improved electrical performance properties. It also is stable during the thermal cycling with less expansion property that is very suitable for higher layer count constructions.

Teflon laminates and bonding plies: This kind of PCB material is ideal for custom PCB manufacturing because of its excellent electrical properties. Teflon laminates and bonding plies can provide high-speed capabilities to the designers and become the ideal material for high-speed circuitry applications, so it is expensive more than polyimide.

Flexible laminates: This kind of custom printed circuit board material is thin and can be used for the electronic design that needs to fold the PCB. Generally, this kind of material is made from higher temperature materials such as polyimide, or low-cost materials such as PEN and polyester.

Other custom PCB production materials also include BT, ceramics, cyanate ester.