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Effect of Advanced Equipment in PCB Manufacturing Efficiency

Nowadays, designing and manufacturing PCBs, or choosing the best manufacturer, can be challenging.

In the era of technology, there are certainly different types of devices for designing or manufacturing printed circuit boards. But with advanced ones, quality and delicacy can be taken to the next level. It also lowers the cost of the process and makes it faster. In this article, the effects of advanced equipment on increasing the efficiency of PCBs will be discussed.

Advanced PCB Manufacturer

A PCB manufacturing company can support customers at all levels, including designing, prototyping, selection of the right raw materials, and programming the Integrated Circuits (ICs). Therefore, these types of businesses require advanced equipment to speed up the process. The design, manufacture, and assembly of PCBs are highly demanding and require expert experience to eliminate defects. For this reason, some of the crucial machines in PCB manufacturing are mentioned below:

Pick and Place: Minor design flaws or incorrect PCB material and process selection can result in poor performance or disappointment.

Therefore, advanced machines can be used easily, such as Pick and Place machines to produce better and more qualified products. Also, these machines place electronic components in the right place at a very high speed and no human effort is required here; which may help to achieve better quality and higher accuracy in less time.

X-Ray Machine for counting the number of components: Using X-ray machines for imaging and also to count the number of components in a reel has a great advantage since it allows to count the number of parts more quickly and very accurately. In reality, the reels are inserted in the device, so the device takes a picture, performs the image processing, and finally the result is displayed on the screen and the PCB quantity will be clear.

X-Ray Machine for 3D PCB inspection: 3D inspection which is an X-ray device for 3D circuit board inspection, has a camera which can adjust the wide-angle circuit board to display at high magnification. Since solder joints cannot be visually inspected, X-ray inspection evaluates solder joints in BGA, QFN, and complex ICs.

In order to decrease prime cost, using these machines would be essential for counting the ICs without labor efforts; if the workers count reels of ICs by themselves it may take a time to do the process accurately. Besides, they may have errors or cause damage to the ICs, therefore using these types of machines can be a great solution for eliminating these potential damages.

On the other hand, although it is not beneficial for some small manufacturers to purchase advanced equipment, it is cost-effective and much more convenient to leave it to a large company which uses upgraded machines for their needs. Therefore, not only is it beneficial for large companies to contact their customers directly for designing and manufacturing PCBAs (PCB assembly) but they may help the smaller businesses to meet their needs in a limited time.

Accelerated Lifetime Test: When it comes to testing PCBA before packing and shipping it to the customer’s side, it is essential to pass all the tests and get the test report to make sure of the product quality. For this reason, Accelerated lifetime test machine would be helpful to check all the joints and pcb quality, in other words it is a simulation of the lifetime of the pcb/pcba .

It is needed to put the pcba into this machine and exposed to cold and hot condition, normally between ( -40 C to 85 C), based on this condition it will appear all the crack joints and solder mask, therefore it would be easy to estimate the lifetime of the pcb regarding the quality of it.

This test is not needed for every part, so it is essential to use it in essential items, such as the oil and gas industry. Since it terms of cost it would be a huge saving if this type of pcba is passed all tests in advance.

Challenges

One of the main challenges when using advanced equipment is decreased human labor. As technology has been improved, it is necessary to use automated systems in the production process particularly in manufacturer units. Although Factory automation in PCB production, from PCB design to packaging the product, results in better product quality and reliability, it reduces human tasks and the need for workers will decrease.

Furthermore, it is needed to monitor this equipment constantly to maintain them on time. If the maintenance of machines is not done in a timely and accurate manner, there could be possible damage which can be expensive as well as time-consuming.

Conclusion

Advanced equipment can handle difficult processes, so the product will pass all required tests by the time the product is finalized and ready to be delivered to the customers. Also, using upgraded facilities and machines can bring a great benefit to the factory as the predicted error is detected and corrected in advance.

Author: Anna Mohammadlou IoT Hardware Designer at Arshon Technology Inc.