This ensures that the boards will be as close to perfect as possible. You see, saving money on cheap PCBs isn’t always best — you can also save a lot of money by not replacing faulty boards.
Almost everyone uses PCBs in one form or another. And suppose you’re interested in buying several PCBs. In that case, many companies offer this service, but the problem is finding a company that will give you high-quality PCBs at a reasonable price.
Here you will find the best PCB assembly quality control. Learn how to choose the best PCB assembly quality control for your business and its benefits.
What is PCB Assembly Quality Control?
PCB assembly quality control is concerned with the quality of the assembly process. In this respect, PCB assembly quality control is similar to other quality control forms. However, PCB quality control has a few unique characteristics that make it quite different from other types of quality control.
PCB Assembly quality control begins by looking at the design of the prototype circuit board and determining how to integrate this design into the production process. The production process must be designed to deal with small size and multiple layers to meet PCBs’ needs.
Another essential step in PCBA quality control is the layout stage. Assemblers use software to create a layout that matches the design to ensure that the placement of components on the board will work properly.
A good assembly process also involves proper material selection, storage, and shipping methods to achieve excellent results from each part of the manufacturing process. A poor material selection or poor shipping methods could cause no end of problems for an assembler.
There are several ways for assemblers to improve their product quality through PCB assembly quality control. One way is creating a logbook where they record which materials were used in each production run and how those parts were handled during transit and storage.
Top 6 Reasons Why Do You Need PCB Assembly Quality Control?
- Getting the Right Result
You’ve got a great idea for a product, building it out of electronics. Your PCB assembly will impact that design, so it may be essential to check the quality of your board before it starts going into the field. Reasonable PCB assembly quality control will help you ensure that your board works correctly and consistently.
- It Can Help To Save Money
Check out this infographic on how much quality costs worldwide High-quality parts can lower costs over time if they last longer, work better, and break less often than cheaper ones.
- Test Equipment and Equipment
It would help if you had PCB assembly quality control because test equipment is required to test and evaluate each PCB before it can go into production.
It would help if you made sure that all PCB parts work correctly and that there aren’t any problems with the board or its components before mass production. This way, you can avoid making mistakes with larger quantities of boards at once.
- Test Results Accuracy
Accurate test results are imperative to ensure the quality of electronic products, especially in the military and aerospace industry, where every detail matters.
No matter what components you use, if your test results are incorrect, it would distort your entire product design and development process. You need to hire an experienced PCB assembly company with robust testing equipment and meet all international standards such as ISO9001:2008.
- It Saves Your Time
To reach world-class quality control standards, you need to do more than assemble PCBs by hand. You also need to test them to ensure they function as they’re supposed to.
No matter how experienced and skilled your operator is, they can never guarantee every single result will be accurate without automated testing equipment like SMT pick-and-place machine and automatic soldering machine, which can speed up your production without sacrificing quality.
- Making Sure That You Get the Right and Sufficient Information
When you are going to manufacture a product, you have to have the correct information. This is why you need to ensure that the people who will manufacture your products will provide you with accurate information about how your products will be made.
One way for you to ensure that you get the information that you need from your manufacturer is by getting them to hire a PCB assembly services company.
These companies can help ensure that all of the information they give to their clients is correct and that they have also done everything they need to make sure that they will be able to produce your product most efficiently and safely possible.
Challenges of Quality Control in PCB Assembly
- Improper Sorting of Parts and Components
This is one of the most common mistakes, but it can also be the easiest to fix. You have to make sure that your parts are sorted by type or location before any assembly begins. This means ensuring that all your resistors and capacitors are together, for example.
It can get complicated if you’re dealing with an intricate PCB with lots of parts, but you must sort them as soon as they arrive so there won’t be issues later on when you’re putting everything together.
- Problems with the PCBs Itself
A PCB that is not of acceptable quality, whether due to manufacturing flaws or poor design, will cause a finished product to have issues. The quality of the components used on the board will also affect how reliable the end product will be.
Poorly constructed PCBs have signal integrity, noise interference, and voltage management issues. These problems can render an end product useless and potentially dangerous.
- Using Incorrect Materials in the Manufacturing Process
The materials used in an assembly are essential factors in determining whether the end product will function as expected. Most mistakes in this area come down to not educating yourself on what components work best with each other or with your PCB substrate.
Some materials need to be treated explicitly before they’re assembled into a circuit board, while others might require unique processes or equipment to be used during assembly.
Frequently the manufacturer must contact a third-party supplier for specific information about these materials and processes; therefore, it is essential to have access to technical support from your suppliers who can help you understand and implement the proper techniques for your products.
- Assembling All the Components Improperly
Assembling all the components of a printed circuit board (PCB) incorrectly is an easy mistake, and it’s certainly not limited to novice assemblers.
It can be hard to determine whether certain parts are installed correctly when dealing with the sheer number of wires, sockets, and components that need to be connected in just the right way—especially in a hurry.
- Improper and Inconsistent Testing Processes
Another challenge when it comes to quality control is inconsistent testing processes. Inconsistent testing processes occur when each employee does not test each part in the same way or uses the same equipment for every test that needs to be performed.
If a person is using faulty equipment or skipping any parts or steps in their testing procedures, it could lead to problems with quality control later on down the line.
Top 5 Ways to Improve the Quality of Your PCB Assembly?
- AOI – Automated Optical Inspection
An essential part of the PCB assembly process is AOI or automated optical inspection. It is a technological method of detecting errors on a printed circuit board assembly that would be too difficult for human eyes to see.
Because it is automated, it can detect errors very quickly. Because it is optical, it does not need to be kept in sterile conditions like other methods, which require room temperature and different strict rules.
Just as with any automated process, there are many different types of AOI. However, because we are discussing PCB assembly, we will focus on the specific types of inspections needed during the board assembly process. Below is a list of standard AOI techniques used in the PCB assembly industry?
- Final Thoughts
There is no denying that PCB assembly quality control is a good thing for all parties involved. The challenge lies in aligning the three stakeholders: consultant, manufacturer, and customer. Get them all here, have a checklist of your needs, and you too can have successful PCB assemblies.
Mass production of PCB assembly services has been made possible by the supply of competitive manufacturing capabilities, which has increased considerably.
So the next time you intend to roll out a prototype PCB, ensure that you have understood all the factors related to PCB assembly quality control to avoid mistakes later in the process.
