PCB Promotion

How to Save Cost and Time for Your PCB

1. The price is higher as the minimum conductor (trace) width and spacing are smaller than 7 mil

2. The price is higher as the minimum annular ring is smaller than 7 mil

3. The price increases as the copper weight increases

4. Double check your Gerber files carefully before ordering

5. Would I be charged more if I want to add silkscreen on both side of the board or just have the silkscreen on top side?

6. Do you have extra charge on solder mask?

7. What is the definition for "hold up"?

8. How do you charge on cutouts?

9. How to you charge on gold fingers?

10. How to you charge on panels?

1. The price is higher as the minimum conductor (trace) width and spacing are smaller than 7 mil

Generally, the price increases as the minimum conductor width and spacing decrease. The price is the same when the minimum conductor width and spacing are larger than 7 mil. So you should try to keep the minimum conductor width and spacing larger than 7 mil, if possible, to decrease cost. For multilayer board, you may want to wire some traces to the inner layer and, as a result, to have more space to increase the minimum conductor width or space.

2. The price is higher as the minimum annular ring is smaller than 7 mil

The minimum annular ring can be increased by decreasing the drill size or increasing the diameter of round pads if possible.

3. The price increases as the copper weight increases

The price increases significantly as the the copper weight of the PC board increases especially when the copper weight is heavier than 2 oz. You should check very carefully the real needs for increasing the copper weight by calculation of the maximum current the circuit can conduct. Generally, you may also try to increase the minimum conductor width to increase the maximum current the circuit can conduct and, as a result, decrease the copper weight.

4. Double check your Gerber files carefully before ordering

Hold-on production due to your file problems after ordering can significantly increase your turn time (lead time). The average delay for file problems can be 2 days. In some cases, you may have to pay for the troubled boards due to your own file problems and have to re-order the boards. We suggest for quantity ordering, you may want to first order 4 prototype boards and order quantity afterwards if the boards have no problems from your possible file problems. It will be even safer if you have a second engineer to check the files for you. The file problem in quantity ordering can cause you thousands of dollars loss and cause your valuable turn time much longer.

5. Would I be charged more if I want to add silkscreen on both side of the board or just have the silkscreen on top side?

No. We don' have extra charges on silkscreen. You may put the silkscreen on both of the top and bottom side of the board. No extra charge. Most of our competitors have this extra charge.

6. Do you have extra charge on solder mask?

No, unlike most of our competitors when they mention their "low" price they hide the silkscreen and solder mask, our price when we mention to you covers everything for standard PCB including solder mask.

7. What is the definition for "hold up"?

The board manufacturing will be held up if we find some problems in your board layout files such as possibly wrong drill size or positions or possibly wrong or missing pads. The expected lead time can be increased for one or two more days should such hold-up happens. Our suggestion for you is to spend more time on double checking your files before ordering than spend much more time on hold-up.

8. How do you charge on cutouts?

Cutouts belongs to nonstandard boards and need extra tooling and programming for our CNC machines . The cost for the cutout may differ case by case. The best way is to send you Gerber files to us so we can calculate the cost for you.

9. How to you charge on gold fingers?

The cost for gold fingers can be very tricky. The extra costs for immersion gold plating and electrolytic gold plating are quite different. We suggest you to use less costly immersion gold plating for your prototypes and use electrolytic gold plating only when your boards are supposed to be plugged into and plugged out from sockets frequently. Also, we need your Gerber files to have exact cost calculation for you based on the amount and area of the gold fingers.

10. How to you charge on panels?

There are two charges. One is for design of the panels depending on if you want us to do that for you or if the panel design comes from you. Certainly you save on your panel design work. The next cost comes from manufacturing and tooling of V-cut or V-score. The cost can be a little for regular rectangular boards in a panels and can be higher if the boards are not regular shape in a panel and we have to mill out some parts from the panels.