How to Weigh Quality Against Cost for Your PCB Project
When you work as an engineer on any project, your job goes beyond simply making the product work. Your product needs to work well, it needs to be reliable, and it also needs to fit within a budget. In PCB Fabrication and PCB Assembly, there are a variety of options that might affect these aspects of your project, and it can be hard to determine what is actually necessary. You might save on the quote by opting for a particular laminate material or surface finish option, but will those types of decisions end up costing your company more in the long term? At Bittele, we understand that these questions can be difficult to answer, so we are here to work with you every step of the way.First of all, we can remind you that every project we work on at Bittele is subject to our strict Quality Management procedures, which means you never need to overcompensate on the design to get the results you want. It can be tempting to specify extremely tight tolerances for your board, thinking that this will translate into a higher level quality, but in some cases you might just be adding more cost.
Bittele observes well-defined tolerances and testing procedures that have been time tested and continuously reviewed to ensure the best results for your project every time. We provide a variety of default PCB Options at a Standard Price that are suitable for the vast majority of projects, so you only need to deviate from these defaults when your project has a specific special requirement. For more information on our specific capabilities and recommendations, feel free to check out our extensive DFM Guidelines document.
A few examples are given below to highlight the types of projects that might need to make extra investments to ensure quality:
- High power applications, where traces carry high levels of current, often require Heavy Copper
- High speed applications, with signals in the MHz range, often require special Laminate Materials
- New and complex projects might require additional verification, such as In-Circuit Testing (ICT) or Functional Circuit Testing (FCT)
If you still have questions about which of our services are right for your project, we would be happy to work with you on DFM questions so that you can reduce your PCB Assembly Cost while maintaining high quality.
To send us your questions, or to send you PCB Design Files in for an official quote, you can Contact Us any time. We can be reached via email at sales@7pcb.com, or toll-free at 1-888-812-1949.
