OEM Services, LLC. - Your Source for Quality Manufacturing

Below are some suggestions on things you can do to control costs in your PCB, and speed up both the design and manufacturing of your circuit board, analog, digital device, or light panel and such. We have several life-times of experiences in cost effective design, layout and component selection and application – so use us to be successful in getting your electronic devices to market quickly, efficiently and cost effectively. Call us for additional ideas.

Design:

Keep digital ground separate from analog ground and connect at a single point
Keep signal paths near their respective ground and avoid crossing other ground planes
Keep SMT and THT on same side of board. (Surface Mount Technology and Thru Hole Technology)
Use 3D modeling to verify Design form and fit

Layout:

Maintain 3mm (0.12in) clearance between components and the edge of the board (border) or include breakaway rails to facilitate process handling
Fiducial marks were developed to facilitate the accurate placement of components on printed circuit boards and are primarily used on surface mount assemblies
Refer to Fiducial Mark Standard for usage and size
Recommended max board size is 452 mm x 452 mm (17.8” x 17.8”). Larger is possible with special tooling
Allow OEM to review the design prior to fabrication for manufacturability recommendations in order to improve cost, delivery and quality

Bare board fabrication costs increase when

Trace width is less than 0.01in.
Conductor spacing is less than 0.01in.
Hole sizes are less than 0.02in. in diameter

Documentation:

3 D Printer – prototype uses a STL format
Laser file uses DXF format
Use either Metric or English / Imperial measurement units – not a combination of both
Surface Mount placement data in formatted text (prn) or comma delimited (csv) ASCII format
Include a Bill of Materials - BOM. Platform independent comma delimited (csv) ASCII format preferred
Drawing of board showing reference designators that correlate with the BOM