Industry Trends of PCB in China

Since China's reform and opening up, Chinese because in the aspects of labor resources, market, investment preferential policies to attract the mass transfer of European and American manufacturing, a large number of electronic products and manufacturers will factory set up in China, and thus led to the development of related industries, including PCB.According to Chinese CPCA statistics, in 2006 China has reached 130 million square meters, PCB production actual output value reached $12.1 billion, accounting for 24.90% of global PCB output, more than Japan to become the world's first.From 2000 to 2006, China's PCB market average annual growth rate of 20%, far more than the global average.The global financial crisis in 2008 caused a huge impact to the PCB industry, but not catastrophic blow to China's PCB industry, under the country's economic stimulus in 2010 China's PCB industry appeared a full recovery, China PCB production value of up to $19.971 billion in 2010.Prismark forecast 2010-2015, China will keep the compound annual growth rate of 8.10%, higher than the global average growth rate of 5.40%.

industrial regional distribution imbalance 

The PCB industry in China are mainly distributed south China and east China region, combined amounted to 90% of the national, industrial cluster effect is obvious.This phenomenon is mainly with the main production base of China's electronics industry is concentrated in the pearl river delta, Yangtze river delta.

China's PCB industry downstream application distribution

China's PCB industry downstream application distribution as shown in the figure below.Consumer electronics accounted for the highest, at 39%;Followed by the computer, accounting for 22%;Communication (14%);Industrial control/medical instruments accounted for 14%;Automotive electronics (6%);Defense and aerospace accounted for 5%.

the technology development lags behind the advanced level

China now although from industry scale has been the world's first, in terms of the overall technical level, but from the PCB industry still lags behind the advanced level.On the product structure, laminated occupied most of output value proportion, but most of them 8 layer below the low-end products, HDI, flexible plate has a certain scale but on the technical gap with Japan and other advanced foreign products, the highest technical content among IC loading board in but there are few domestic enterprises can produce.

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PCB Design – How To Create Circuit Boards

To create a PCB Design you need to draw holes, pads and wires for your circuit. Then you send this drawing to a manufacturer or you etch it yourself.

Sounds hard? Don’t worry, there are many free tools out there that will help you do this.

Starting with schematics

Before you start drawing wires and stuff, you need to know what circuit you want to build. So you need to find or design schematics for your circuit. And you need a PCB design software. Then you are ready to begin the process.

Start by drawing your schematic diagram into the software you have chosen.

PCB design process

Preparing the board layout

Now it’s time to draw the board. You need to transfer your schematic diagram into a drawing of your printed circuit board.

Drawing PCB’s is artwork. Take your time, and make sure it looks good. Follow the design guidelines for drawing circuit boards.

Most PCB software will have tools that will help you draw your board from the schematic. I can’t cover them all, but I’ve written a PCB design tutorial for Eagle to help you learn.

Things To Think About

Will you put the circuit board in a box? Remember that tall components might need to be laid down flat to fit. With a drawing of your components placed on your board, print it out on a sheet of paper. Use this paper version of your board to test that it will fit the box and that your connectors will fit.

Getting your PCB manufactured

When you are done drawing your board, it is time to get your PCB design ready for manufacturing.

This basically means you need to check your board for errors and convert your board layout to Gerber files. Then, choose a cheap PCB manufacturer and get your board made.

10-Step PCB Assembly Process

Why we assembly boards so FAST

Step 1: Quotation

After receiving a RFQ, our sales teams carry out action:

Full/ Partial Turnkey Orders

Review required files: BOM files, Gerbers files and XYRS files. Contact PCBs and parts suppliers for pricing. 

        

Consignment Orders

Review required files: BOM files, Gerbers files and XYRS files. Quotations are delivered within 24 hours.     

Step 2: Inventory parts

Receiving, storing and maintaining exact parts and PCBs inventories is a top priority.

988 Assembly Orders Inventory (Turn-Key)Parts and or PCBs are ordered using customer's BOM files. 988 has dedicated team at Digi-Key and Mouser for part sourcing along with other leading suppliers. We have cooperation with lots PCB fabrication providers. Customer supplies inventory and custom kitting labels are printed from provided BOM files and sent to customers for inventory preparation.

Laser-cut stencils are also used for all projects.

Our attrition rate is very low, but it is safe to provide us a small amount of overages to avoid any delays in assembly.

Passive Devices:

0603 and larger footprints: Add 30% to build quantity plus 30 extra pieces.

0201 and 0402 footprints: Add 100% overage plus 100 extra pieces.

All others add 30% overages.

IC's:

Under $1.00    - Add 30% overage.

$1.00 - $5.00   - Add one or two pieces.

Over $5.00       - No overage.

Step 3: Virtual Prototypes

Virtual prototypes (or smart pdfs) allow you to see and review manufacturing data through a digital image of your PCBs. It helps to find and fix potential issues before production. It is a free service performed via our proprietary software, BOM Builder.

Full Service Assembly

988 engineers teams check for parts placement and other errors. Pictures will be sent to customers for confirmation. Projects are put on hold until all issues are solved. It minimizes delays during the production process. R&D prototypes engineering is an automated process. Components will be placed per XYRS, BOM files and Gerbers.All components that need to be placed will be placed.                              

Step 4: Preparation for Assembly

The manufacturing team begins the automated, machine-placed assembly process by:

cutting, programming Pick&Place machines. 988 Assembly has a proprietary, automated process which makes us set-up machines in hours rather than days it taken by other providers. Applying solder to the PCBs via customed stencils. When all the paste is done, each board will be thoroughly inspected to verify every pad is adequately covered.

Step 5: Machine-Assemble SMT Parts

988 Assembly uses latest YV100X, YV 100II and YV88X machines to quickly, machine-place all SMT parts. These machines could assemble boards in just a few hours which would normally take an engineer with weeks to complete by hand.

Step 6: Hand - Place Remaining Parts

For complex, large or non-standard SMT parts, 988 Assembly team with highly skilled staff will hand-place individual parts as needed before reflow.

Step 7: Reflow and Post Reflow Inspection

 Once all the components are placed on the boards, each one will be sent into our 10-zone reflow machines.

Step 8: Final Assembly

Boards are carefully inspected for solder short or cold solder joint and repairs are done, if necessary.Then all remaining thru-hole components (DIP) are placed.  

Step 9: Quality Assurance

988 Assembly uses a 400-LD washer and aqueous cleaning system to remove flux from finished boards. Boards are dried and visually inspected by our Quality Assurance team.

Step 10: Packing and Shipping

 All assembled boards are packaged in ESD packaging and shipped via DHL, FedEx or UPS. Any unused components are returned in accordance with customer instructions. Additionally, customers are notified by an email when their packages are shipped.

PCB Surface Finish

     Common PCB surface treatment process are: hot air leveling (HASL, hot air solder leveling), organic coating (OSP), electroless nickel / immersion gold, immersion silver, immersion tin, etc.

1)HASL，hot air solder leveling
    HASL also known as hot air solder leveling, it is in the molten tin-coated surface of the PCB and use heated air leveling (blown flat) process, to form a layer of copper oxide can be both anti provide good solderability of the coating layer. HASL solder and copper usually formed with copper-tin metal compound has a thickness of about 1 ~ 2mil.

2)OSP
    Skim -> micro etch -> Pickling -> water cleaning -> organic coating -> cleaning, process control relative to other treatment processes more easily.

3)Electroless Nickel / Immersion Gold (also known as chemical gold)
    Clean off the pickling -> micro-etch -> grep -> activate -> Electroless Nickel -> chemical leaching of gold; their process of six chemical tank, involving nearly a hundred kinds of chemicals, the process is relatively complicated.

4)Immersion Silver
    Immersion Silver is a displacement reaction, it is almost sub-micron silver coating. Sometimes silver leaching process can also contain organic compounds, mainly to prevent migration of silver silver corrosion and eliminate the problem, this is very difficult to measure out a thin layer of organic matter, analysis showed less than 1% by weight of the organism.

5)Immersion Tin
Due to the current all tin-based solder is, the tin layer with any type of solder to match, from this point of view, immersion tin process is very promising. But previous PCB via solder dipping process easy after whisker, welding and tin migration over soldering shall bring reliability problems, thus limiting the immersion tin process of adoption. After immersion tin solution, the organic additive, the granular structure of the tin layer structure to overcome the previous problem, but also has good thermal stability and weldability.

Sophie Deng
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Wonderful PCB Limited