Introduction to Determining Factors Affecting PCB Quotation

At present, the quotation of PCB circuit board production is given by factory engineers. With the continuous progress of Internet technology, many board factories now have PCB circuit board online pricing platform. However, because the e-commerce mode of the manufacturing industry is still in its initial stage, online quotation can only operate some simple boards.

Why is the QUOTATION for PCB so complicated?

PCB circuit board quotation is mainly determined by the following aspects:

1.PCB area (size)

Area refers to the size of the PCB design drawing. If it’s a rectangle, it’s length by width. In the case of circles, or other irregular shapes, the maximum contour range is calculated.

In general, the material waste caused by irregular shape should be folded in.

2. Batch size of PCB

The larger the volume, the lower the price spread out on each board.

3. PCB material

The base material is the most core material of PCB manufacturer, board factory generally defaults to long-term cooperation with the supplier’s plate. But for PCB board with special requirements, the designer should specify the sheet material, and the price will be different. There is, for example, a Rogers plate for microwave radiofrequency, which costs ten times as much as a normal plate.

General board factory commonly used board materials have health benefits, Hong Ren, Kingboard, etc.

4. The PCB layers

Single-sided, double-sided, 4layer board, 6layer board, generally the number of board layer is even. he higher the number of plates, the higher the price, doubling the growth.

5. Delivery time

In general, the production cycle of single and double sided baord is 3~4 days. In case of special emergency, we can choose 48-hour or even 24-hour urgent, but the cost will increase. If there are design problems that need to be clarified, start counting the time after all the problems have been identified.

6. Whether a special process is needed

Each factory will have its own process parameters, if your design exceeds the process capacity of the board factory, they need to carry out special control in the production, at this time the cost of production will increase.

In addition, the following circumstances will also affect the quotation.

(1) thickness.

Conventional double panel thickness is 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2, 1,6,2.0, 2.4, 3.0, 3.2(mm).

If you want to produce other thickness of the plate, the price will go up.

(2) The color of welding ink.

Circuit board will generally cover a layer of ink, this layer of ink does not stick solder, called resistance welding layer. Green is the most common, also the most economical, so resistance welding layer is also called green oil layer. Other colours are red, yellow, blue, white and black. Black ink board is the most difficult to produce, the cost will be high.

(3) Welding plate treatment.

Copper in the air is easy to oxidize affect welding, so the place that needs to be welded should undertake surface coating treatment, some factories also call surface treatment. Its process includes HASL with lead, HASL-LF, immersion gold, nickel plated gold, OSP, immersion silver, etc.

HASL is the most common process in PCB industry. It has the advantages of good solderability and low cost. The disadvantage is that the flatness is not good, especially when a large area of Windows, it is easy to appear uneven.

HASL-LF is to meet the requirements of environmental protection, this process cost slightly higher.

Immersion gold is a thin layer of gold formed at the welding place by substitution reaction, which has good flatness and weldability.

Nickel-plated gold is nickel plated first at the welding and then gold plated. It is characterized by wear resistance and is used for frequently inserted positions, such as gold fingers and buttons.

OSP is based on the chemical reaction between liquid medicine and copper skin to produce organic protective film, the film has anti-oxidation, heat shock, moisture resistance. OSP is generally used less.

Immersion Silver refers to the deposition of a layer of silver on the weld. This process is less commonly used. Silver in the air is easy to oxidize black, required within the specified time welding.

(4) Electronic testing.

The electronic test is used to detect whether the solder joints of the same network in the circuit are open and whether there are short circuits in the solder joints of different networks.

Proofing and small batch plate adopts the flying probe test, we can imagine flying probe into two pens and a multimeter, they can move fast and accurate positioning, in a very short time to complete the two measuring points, and to compare the on-off state with existing data, if should have broken place on, or should have been on place off, is recorded.

A large number of panels are generally tested with a needle bed, which requires the production of test fixture, which is a parallel measurement method, the test speed is fast, but the cost is high.

(5) Number of boards.

In order to save cost, two or more boards can be put together in one design drawing and sent to the board factory. This method can save the engineering cost and film cost of the board factory, but some board factories need to add the board cost.

(6) Character color.

Generally, the color of the words on the PCB board is white. If other colors are made, the cost will increase.  Board size, batch, delivery time and the number of boards to be decided according to the specific situation.

At present, a lot of board factories are on the Internet to launch automatic order system, if there is a design document needs to produce, direct order can be.