One of the first questions to ask when evaluating a PCB assembly contract manufacturer is, “Can they handle my expected production volume?” To answer that, we first have to understand what we mean by low, mid, and high-volume.
For this video we’ll leave aside very-high-volume consumer electronics, and consider more typical volumes done by US-based contract manufacturers like Z-AXIS.
SMT assembly: What is high volume?
Buyers of SMT printed circuit board assemblies often consider volume in terms of “boards per year.” But that doesn’t tell us what we need to know. A contract manufacturer thinks terms of “number of parts to be placed.” This is because the speed of the SMT pick-and-place machines is generally the limiting factor in how fast a job can be completed.
Consider this example: For this job (the PCBA on the left), we need to produce 50 boards. For this job (the PCBA on the right), we need to produce 1000 boards. Which is higher volume?
The board on the left has 1800 parts. So that’s a total of 90,000 parts in the job. The one on the right has 40 parts per board for a total of 40,000 parts. We would consider it to be the lower-volume job, even though it’s 20 times more boards.
Panelization of PCB assemblies
One reason the number of boards doesn’t give you the true picture of volume is panelization. For most PCB assemblies, the layout designer fits multiple boards in an array on a single substrate, or panel
The entire panel is populated at once, and then depaneled into individual boards.
So to produce 10,000 small boards – which sounds like a lot – we may need just 100 panels – which is not a lot. But again, what really matters is the total number of parts in the job.
How can we do low, mid and high volume SMT assembly in one place?
Now that we have a better understanding of volume, let’s look at what a contract manufacturer needs in order to do low, mid and high volumes in one factory.
First you need SMT lines designed for both speed and flexibility. These machines pick and place up to 45,000 parts per hour to complete high-volume jobs fast, and are designed for fast change-over between jobs
so you can do many different lower-volume jobs in a week.
A contract manufacturer may also have a semi-automated line for lower volume jobs as well as new product introduction
Other electronic product manufacturing processes
For work other than SMT assembly, we may use manual processes for low volumes and switch to robotic systems for higher volumes. For example, this robotic dispensing system for box builds.
We can program a few ICs by hand pr use a robotic system for higher volume.
For through hole PCB assembly, and some mixed-technology boards, the wave solder can handle any volume. For mixed-technology boards that can’t be wave soldered, we can do hand-soldering for low volumes, or a robotic soldering system for higher volumes.
Learn more
Contact Z-AXIS to learn more about our electronic design services and PCB assembly processes that allow us to handle nearly any volume of electronic product manufacturing in the USA.