How to estimate the cost of PCB fabrication?
PCB board is also known as printed circuit-board, which plays an important role in the electronic parts. Thanks to its special advantages that combines density, high-reliability, assemble and maintenance, which makes it been widely applied in the electronic industry. What are you most concerned about the aspects of PCB fabrication? Is quality, price or service? I believe that the price is the primary concerned for most customers. Then do you know how to estimate the cost of PCB board? The cost of the PCB board can be affected by many things including the material, technology, surface treatments and quality assurance test, etc. PCB can be divided into three classes from its material: fiberglass panels (FR-4), half fiberglass panels (CEM-1/3) and copper clad board (FR-1/2). Part 1: Material. Different grades raw material and different suppliers of material decided different quality and price of the pcb boards. The most commonly used is FR-4, the reason is that it has good hardness and resistant to bending compared with other material. But every supplier has different price for the different material. Part 2: Thickness. Taking the commonly Double layer PCB as example, the thickness of the plate is rang 0.2um to 3.0um, the min copper thickness is 0.5oz and it up to 3oz. But the thickness will be designed according to the customer requests. The price will be changed according to the thickness of plate and copper. But there are some price variance between the thermosetting oil and light green oil in the Solder resist lnk. Part 3: Line width, line spacing, aperture and some technological design. Taking two kinds of PCB circuit boards each have 100 holes as example, which will produce different cost of drill between one is use 0.2mm aperture and another is larger than 0.2mm. And the line width/spacing is similar to this. In addition, there will be existed extra charge that used some unique technological design, such as half-hole, blind via, button board and carbon lnk print, etc. Pare 4: Acceptance criteria. The QC inspect standard of each customer is different. The most commonly used is IPC2, followed by IPC3, enterprise standard and military standard, etc. The higher QC inspect standard, the more expensive. Part 5: The fee of mold and test frame. If you need to produce PCB board in large quantity, it will add some extra charges of making mold which is usually quote for above 1000rmb ,but except for the PCB prototyping and small amount. Part 6: Order quantity. The smaller order of pcb small batch, the more charge will be. Because all of the PCB processing is same, no matter you produce 1pcs or batch. In a word, the more quantity, the more price advantage. Expected the above factors, there are many other factors such as surface treatments (ENIG, immersion tin, immersion silver) and so on. In all, this article is only provided some references. On the other hand, the different pcb price is depended on its internal and inevitable factors. About the specific price calculation of pcb board, you can refer to the elecrow online quotes. Click on the picture to see more quotations information.