FEATURED VIDEO
3D Printing in PCBA Manufacturing
Video Transcript
Today we’re going to look at 3D printing applications in electronics contract design and manufacturing.
One of the most interesting is 3D printing mold inserts, making injection molding affordable for small-quantity production. We use injection molding to encase and protect cables and printed circuit boards that we make for our customers. But a custom machined aluminum mold can run tens of thousands of dollars – a direct cost to the customer.
Instead, we can do a 3D-printed, custom mold insert, for about $50, insert it into a universal mold, and do cost-effective injection molding
for customers who need only a few dozen to a few hundred pieces. They get the same quality, at a fraction of the fixed costs.
A second application is 3D printing prototype enclosures for our printed circuit board assemblies. When we design circuit board assemblies for customers, they often have unique space constraints — which means we also need to design custom enclosures. By 3D printing the prototype enclosure in-house we can save weeks, and a lot of money, for our customers. Our engineers can troubleshoot problems with the enclosure design and quickly turn around multiple iterations as needed before ordering the final.
Finally we use 3D printing to produce a wide variety of jigs and fixtures for our contract manufacturing operations. Here are just a few examples:
- This fixture holds a printed circuit board assembly for UV LED curing of an adhesive on the board.
- We designed this electrical test fixture for a PCB assembly we produce. It was quick and inexpensive to make, keeping cost down for our customer.
- This printed adapter lets us use our dispensing robot with any size syringe. Making our own fixtures fits our needs better than trying to work with what’s available from the equipment vendor.
- This 3D printed bottle base has a sensor to alert the operator when the bottle’s contents are low in one of our electronics contract manufacturing processes.
- Custom forks for the tube feeder on our SMT line let us respond to customer needs for rarely-used parts, positioning them for the robotic heads to pick and place.
3D printing gives us even greater flexibility to meet customer needs, and support high-quality and repeatable processes in electronics manufacturing. Please contact us to learn more.
Learn more
Contact Z-AXIS to learn more about we use 3D printing for low-volume injection molding and over-molding, to create prototypes, and to provide cost-effective and high-quality circuit board assembly services.