Electronics: PCB Production
As an engineer, what can you do to speed up PCB production and reduce costs for your company? The first and most obvious answer is to simplify your PCB designs. However, if you are wrestling with significant design challenges, oftentimes youre going to have to make compromises here. Should you cut components, avoid using vias, or deviate from manufacturer recommended board thicknesses?
One way to figure out how to optimize PCB production is to experiment with numerous prototype models on a computer. CAD technology is extremely advanced, and a good program should be able to calculate metrics for your finished circuit. Of course, before you go into full scale PCB production, you want to create a prototype.
Speeding up PCB Production
Your CAD software should be able to give you a comprehensive inventory of the properties of your PCB. Yet you can never completely anticipate how the PCB will react to the environmental conditions of the real world. Thats one of the reasons why fabrication experts recommend building complete prototypes–including all interconnected PCBs in a system–before filling an order.
The Devil is in the details, at least in terms of how to optimize alloy levels and board thickness. If you try to make the board dense by adding dozens of layers, you could introduce a number of extremely tough technical challenges. On the other hand, if you strip the thickness of your PCBs too much, you might make them too large to be useful in the context of your overall system. Thus, most design engineers eventually compromise.