How to ensure the quality of circuit boards

Quality control in PCB production

In order to ensure the quality of your PCB design, your tasks should include the following three areas.

- Manufacturer's capability must be ensured.

The quality department, in conjunction with the purchasing department, should investigate and approve the PCB manufacturer's qualifications and manufacturing capabilities to ensure that they have sufficient capacity to supply your design project

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- Ongoing checks and verifications must be performed prior to production.

PCB designers must check and confirm the design drawings that the manufacturer will apply several times before manufacturing. Since PCB design cannot be successful in a single pass and must be modified repeatedly, PCB manufacturers hold multiple versions of design drawings. Therefore, it is necessary to double-check and validate the final design drawings provided by the manufacturer before actual fabrication so that the printed circuit boards fabricated conform to the requirements of the previous version.

- Critical processes in PCB manufacturing should be given high priority.

The quality of critical processes in PCB manufacturing has a great impact on the performance and reliability of the PCB, and quality control in this area must be strengthened. Critical technical procedures established by the PCB manufacturer, including etching, through-hole, etc., must be monitored and inspected to ensure that there are no burrs, no gaps, no bridging defects and no voids. In addition, quality control of multilayer printed circuit board stacks must be performed to ensure thickness, bond strength and positional accuracy. Since high-frequency PCBs and microstrip boards often require gold plating, specific plating instructions must be developed to ensure the thickness and purity of the plating.