The cost of PCB fabrication depends on the design and the end use of the PCB, and there are many practical factors that will affect the cost of the PCB circuit board. Generally, the three most influential factors affecting PCB manufacturing cost are the size of the board, the number of layers, and the type of material used.
Many PCB purchasers or engineers always feel that the price is high when they look for PCB manufacturers to make boards, but they don’t know where the cost is, and they don’t know how to optimize the cost under the premise of ensuring the quality of the board, so they can only shop around. Whoever has the lowest price.
1. PCB Materials
Different brands of boards have different PCB fabrication prices. For example, TG value ≥ 150°, multi-layer board, PP sheet medium thickness of more than 0.2MM, Guoji will be more expensive than Kingboard, Shengyi, Nanya, but Guoji is generally used for single-sided and double-sided boards. There are also some unknown brand-name boards, which are cheaper and can be used, but their performance is relatively poor, and the probability of quality problems will be relatively high. If you want to make a PCB circuit board with more than 8 layers, you need to choose a board with better performance. It is recommended to use Kingboard TG170, which is more cost-effective.
2. Ink
Ink needs to consider two points, namely color and brand. In terms of color, the most common is green oil, but if special color inks are used in PCB fabrication, such as blue oil, white oil, butter, black oil, etc., the price will generally increase. In terms of brands, Sun Ink is currently the best, which is mainly characterized by high viscosity, stable dielectric constant, good insulation and oxidation resistance, but it is relatively expensive. Other brands of ink are relatively cheaper.
3. Film
If it is a volume board with simple materials and a line width spacing of 5/5MIL or more, PCB manufacturers will choose to use film in order to increase production capacity. The larger the size of the PCB fabrication board, the higher the cost of the film.
4. Line width and line spacing
The thinner the wire, the higher the price, and those below 5/5mil usually increase the price.
5. Drilling data
The smaller the hole, the higher the price, and the hole with a diameter less than 0.3MM will increase the price; the more holes, the higher the price, and there are other special holes that will increase the PCB fabrication cost, such as half holes, PTH holes larger than 6.0mm, etc.
6. Finish copper thickness
Printed circuit boards with surface copper ≥ 20Z copper thickness and hole copper greater than 25UM will increase the cost.
7. Complete PCB thickness
The price of circuit boards with a thickness of 1.2mmand 1.6mm is not much different, but if the thickness of the board is 2.0mm or even thicker, the PCB fabrication cost will increase accordingly.
8. Shape information
There are many routing grooves, and the size of the routing groove is less than 1.0mm, and the cost will increase.
9. Surface technology.
Our common PCB fabrication techniques include OSP (anti-oxidation), leaded HASL, lead-free HASL (environmental protection), immersion gold, gold plating, and some combined processes. The price of the above process becomes more and more expensive, that is, OSP<HASL <lead-free HASL<immersion gold <gold plating.
6 layer ENIG PCB
10. Mold fee and test stand
If it is prototyping or volume PCB, generally PCB manufacturers adopt the shape of drilling and milling, and there is no need to charge additional PCB fabrication and milling fees. However, if it is a small volume, it is necessary to open the mold and punch the PCB, resulting in a set of mold costs. For PCB prototyping or small volume, flying probe testing is usually used, and the cost depends on the number of test points in the document. If it is a high volume, it is necessary to open a test frame to test, which is highly efficient and the overall cost is lower!