Professional ways to reduce PCB prototyping spins effectively

PCB prototyping can be extreme popular among the electronic makers and in industry uses. However, there are also many products in PCB prototyping during projecting. The most common problem can be the PCB prototyping spins which may trouble people a lot. How to deal with this troublesome problem effectively? Here are 5 professional ways to help you out of this problem quickly. 

Firstly, You have to first of all research and select suppliers earlier in the design circle. The next logical step in the design process is to get back a working example of the prototype design for testing. This process consists of multiple steps—components must be procured; the PCB has to be fabricated; and the parts need to be correctly attached to the PCB. How this manufacturing flow ultimately occurs is up to the design team to select and manage.

Talk with suppliers’ customer service technical teams or sales teams, and determine just how well they can respond with quality across the whole range of your anticipated project styles. Fabricating the PCB that serves as the connection medium for all the components and connectors that make up your circuit design. In the process of getting to know your manufacturing chain, you should assess your contacts for their ability to consult on your design particulars.

Secondly, you should optimize for cost and performance before layout. In a general sense, the fewer components that are needed to implement your circuit, the more reliable your end product. Costs don’t simply refer to the number of components used in a design. They also tie into PCB real estate and design complexity, flying probe test times, and opportunities for design-related manufacturing issues.

Thirdly, develop your layout to the fabricator’s sweet spot. Regardless of whom you choose, your fabricator has a sweet spot—that place where designs are well inside the middle of the manufacturing process window. From this spot, minor variations in manufacturing still keep your design well inside manufacturing capabilities, and thus increase your yields and reliability.

Fourthly, verify your layout’s manufacture ability with a supplier DFM tool. A top-tier fabricator will make that report available to you when submitting your design for quotation. Using the contents of that report, which verifies if your design will fit inside the manufacturing process, is a valuable step to getting a properly fabricated board, and is the first measure toward developing a board optimized for production.

Fifthly, manage prototyping costs and hidden costs. Prototyping creates more robust designs from the first revision with proper preparation. While it may seem like a lot of useless preparation work, consider the hidden costs of a five-person design team, spending five person-days to complete the preparations mentioned here.

When the PCB design is simple, or far away from the current technological edge, these strategies have less impact on your design cycles. As you move to tight tolerances in circuit timing, then these strategies become more and more important.  If you don’t know what to do, you can also find a suitable PCB fabricating supplier for your PCB prototyping to save your energy and money.