A Brief Description of the PCB Assembly Service

 

PCBA is an abbreviated term that stands for Printed Circuit Board Assembly. It’s the process that incorporates populating the components on a bare board on the area where the SMD and THD parts should be. The SMD components will occupy the area on the surface of the board, while the THD components will go into the conductive holes. Based on the design, a board may have components on one or both sides with only THD or SMD components. Of course, a few products even feature a mixture of the two. The installation process can be manual, but professional manufacturing companies usually resort to automated machinery. After all, these companies have to deliver consignments while adhering to strict deadlines. Only hobbyists or engineers can work with a soldering iron, flux, and solder tin to install the components.

 

1. Ordering the service: Now, if you have a project you want to delegate to a printed circuit board manufacturer, you need to know how these companies operate. Here you’ll learn how GreatPCB offers PCB Assembly Services. Customers need to start by asking for a quote from the website. After that, they can scroll down to the service option. Upon selecting it, they’ll reach a section containing several empty fields. Once there, they must fill the blank areas and select the right options. As the customer, you must also be specific about what you need if you want to receive an appropriate quote.

 

2. Wait for it: Once you place the order for PCB Assembly Services, you just have to wait for a reviewer to analyze your order and quote your BOM. The reviewer will also inspect the order to see if you missed something or if you need clarification on one or more points. Regardless of the company you choose to work with, there may be a price calculator on the website you can use. If the company of your choice has such a calculator, just remember that it’ll be an estimation, combined with the service fee. The assembly fee can differ from one company to another, but it usually remains somewhere around $30.

 

3. Paying and waiting for delivery: At this particular stage, the manufacturers and other specialists will be going through the Gerber files and quote the BOM. As soon as you make payment, the company will initiate the manufacturing process before moving on to assembling the boards. In the meantime, they will place an order for the necessary components that will arrive later. The BOM will incorporate notes concerning the lead time required for the parts to arrive. For calculating the turn-time on turnkey orders, you need to consider the time required to procure all parts and components. Before the parts are ready for deployment, the company will start fabricating the PCBs and begin making the stencil. Soon after that, the final process will start as soon as the associated parts arrive.

 

4. A magnified look: To someone who doesn’t have a proper understanding of the process, assembling a printed circuit board may be as simple as printing it and then placing all components using solder paste before placing them inside the reflow oven. Unfortunately, things aren’t as simple as you think, at least if the company you partner with does its job meticulously. Every stage includes different testing methods that the manufacturers will conduct on every assembled product. Without conducting these tests, no company will choose to deliver the boards to the customer.

 

Endnote

 

As you can see, a lot of things go into fabricating and assembling printed circuit boards. It’s also worth mentioning here that the processes elucidated have several other parts, subparts, sections, and subsections. It isn’t possible to include everything in this write-up. That’s why you should seek out a reputable company first. Then, you must speak to a representative of the firm for more information.