How to Choose the Right PCB Supplier at Fair Price?
Answers can vary depending on the dimension or point of view we are looking at, we are a hobby of electrical engineer type or we are running a relatively large or small company. The worst case of choosing the wrong choice can lead us to a bad product, beyond a deadline, a more expensive final product, some combination of already mentioned or something totally unexpected.
With saturated markets with many PCB Assembly Services and prices vary significantly, we may be wondering if we have chosen the right company to produce our PCB, prototype or high-volume production.
I have put some tips for choosing the right PCB Assembly Services:
PCB price
Generally, the fact is that the quality and price of PCB go hand in hand and it makes sense that higher quality also means higher price PCB. But since there are more and more PCB manufacturing companies where they all tend to have the same price. The end result is more reasonable PCB pricing. There are several things that affect PCB prices, they are also mentioned in the following sections. Some PCB offers good quality PCB and PCB Assembly jobs at most reasonable PCB prices. We can send the PCB layer number and get estimate PCB price.
Board Quality production
There are enough trust and credibility to believe that they will build our forum right the first time, or is there a worry that they can generate the wrong board and cause a delay? The quality can also be the size between the requested performance and the one that we actually get, this thing is very important when it comes to high-density design and high-speed communication lines.
Delivery time
Will very low cost of PCB manufacturers require few weeks to schedule and build our PCB board? Some PCB offers 24-Hours, 48 hours and 72 hours speed up service.
Minimum order quantity
The minimum order quantity of PCB or PCB Assembly in some PCB is only 1 unit. And usually, they have no maximum quantity requirement.
Assembling a file
Once we are done with the PCB design stage, we can go for production. There are several types of file manufacturers that may need to start production. They can request Gerber files which is a common thing. Each one represents a Gerber file solder one layer of PCB, for example, up, down, top, bottom layer or some other.
Manufacturing parameters
This part is very important to us. Before we start with routing and definitely before sending the files, we need to know about the manufacturer’s capabilities through minimum path thickness, minimum clearance between tracks or planes, the number of layers they can generate, what is the minimum and maximum size of boards, drill holes and things like that.