Why should you Visit to your PCB supplier in Taiwan?

In Taiwan,there are many PCB manufacturers with capacity of multi-layer PCB production, making good quality multi-layer PCBs at a competitive price.

Some of them are good and some are not.

This post will release some facts of PCB manufacturers in Taiwan, and show you how to judge a manufacturer.

First you should make sure your PCB supplier is a real manufacturer

There are more and more PCB trading companies emerged in Taiwan, also mainland China, and in most cases, they don’t have their own factories.

If you want find high quality PCB not just low price, you should choose a real PCB manufacturer.

Second is taking a visit to your PCB supplier in Taiwan

As you may know, develop speed of China has grown faster and faster. Most of Taiwan companies have moved their plants to mainland China for lower cost in land and labor.

You might be willing to take a visit to your supplier for check if they put their plants in Taiwan or mainland China.

Multilayer PCBs find applications in professional electronic equipment

The function of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) is to connect electrical components mechanically. It is a mass product and the manufactures are noted for high-volume production. In the competitive PCB market, maintaining the right product quality is a matter of survival.

One important parameter in PCB production is glass transition temperature (TG). It is an important dimension that denotes the temperature at which resin matrix converts from a glassy, brittle condition into soft and elastic one.

Technically, TG is not the maximum operational temperature. It assumes importance as the temperature at which a material is able to withstand a continuous thermal load at the operating temperature.

Materials, where TG exceeds 170°C is called a high TG material.

High tg PCB materials display the following properties:

 >>High-temperature durability

 >>Long delamination durability

 >>Low Z-axis expansion;

Multilayer PCBs find applications in professional electronic equipment such as computers and military equipment. They are best in high-speed circuit and provide more space for the conductor pattern and power.

In multilayer PCBs, PCBS are stacked together with reliable predefined mutual connection and the costs are high because of the complex manufacturing process.

Multilayer PCB suppliers offer PCBs with varied specifications. Connecting electronic components to a circuit board involves several techniques including the surface mount technique and hole techniques

Multilayer PCBs are considered high-speed, multi-functional and of high-capacity despite their small size. With electronic devices becoming smaller and lighter, PCB design calls for minimizing the length of the signal line and ditching parallel routes.

Since, single-sided or double-sided PCBs cannot meet the requirements multilayer PCBs take the centre stage with high tolerance and even 24 layers. In optimizing the capacity of a printed circuit board, attention has to be paid to the equipment, fabrication, assembly and tests. In prototyping PCBs, outsourcing is a good option to save on costs.

Those with in-house PCB fabrication and assembly facility take up prototyping and makes sense to subcontract a vendor specialized in the prototyping of PCBs.  Those with online quote system can save time and details like design requirements in terms of thickness, type of material and production specifications can be comfortably quoted in the online quote system.

In PCB production, the cost is deeply linked to the volumes. It is less expensive to manufacture big volumes of PCBs.

*Bio

The author, David Spencer, is an electrical engineer with long experience in PCBs industry and runs a consultancy in London.

What are PCB production the main elements?

There is no exaggeration in saying that printed circuit boards (PCBs) are ubiquitous and no electronic devices on earth exist without PCBs.

They are everywhere in all gadgets-- TVs, computers, toys, cell phones, music players, automobiles, aircraft and what not. Anything that uses some sort of electronics will have PCBs with them.

Any PCB manufacturer will tell you that PCB is smaller than circuits and the miniature size is the key in its production process.

In PCBs, the printed circuit reduces the need for wires and improves appearance and durability. For mass-producers of PCBs, who are running large production facilities PCBs are products that offer huge cost benefits.

In PCB production the main elements are

 >>Laminate board.

 >> Components mounted on the board

 >>Traces serving as wires connecting components and circuit

Many materials are used in the making of boards. Of them, six are widely manufactured: FR-1, FR-2, FR-3, FR-4, CEM-1 and CEM-3. By FR, implication is flame retardant. FR-4 is widely manufactured and used in single and multilayer boards for hiking thermal tolerance up to 130°C.

In PCBs, copper traces are spread across the entire board, etching away unnecessary areas by masked stencils. Some boards also use gold for sensitive, low-voltage applications to ensure lead-free (RoHS) compliance.

The design of a printed circuit board (PCB) is important. Most PCB manufacturers prefer making compact flexible PCBs for assembling electronic circuits. They may have one or more insulating boards with printed copper layers and signal traces.

As far as mass production PCB is concerned, the volume of products depends on the demand in the market. This results in lots of variety, ranging from single layer PCB to multi-layer PCBs having so many sections.

The most common type of PCBs offered by PCB manufacturer is flexible PCB where circuits are assembled on a thin, flexible insulating material allowing PCBs to bend without damage to the circuit or the insulating material.

For supporting basic circuits, the PCB manufacturers offer single-sided PCBs which are less complex and comprise electrical components and copper on a single insulating board.

In double-sided board, circuitry components can be seen housed on both sides of the substrate. Complex printed circuit board manufacturing will have multi-layered PCBs that comprise multiple sheets of substrate interspersed with insulating layers.

In rigid-flex PCBs the combo display are joined together for delivering complex circuits required in aerospace and military applications.

*Bio

The author, David Spencer, is a mechanical engineer with long experience in home automation systems and runs a consultancy in London.