Improving the PCB manufacturing process

At UK Electronics, we’re always looking for ways to improve our service and products, ensuring every customer gets the PCBs they expect. While we’re proud of our PCB design, manufacturing and prototyping services, we know the industry moves forward and we have to keep up with the changes to ensure we always deliver quality units in an efficient manner.

Monitoring and investing in new technology to help us improve is a big part of what we do, as this means we deliver the PCBs you want quicker than before without losing quality. We also work on designs and prototypes internally that can change the way we work and set new standards across the industry.

This expertise is just one reason why we’re one of the most popular for PCB assembly in the UK, and we take small, custom orders to large, requests for big names and devices. Our PCB manufacturing process allows us to handle both types of order with ease, fully understanding the needs of our customers to make sure we deliver what they expect.

As technology improves, we must do the same. This is why, when a new development emerges, we study it and see if we can make use of it or improve on it further.

Innovations in technology

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is one such innovation of recent years that has made a huge difference to PCB manufacturing. While this has been used by many companies to print circuit boards, or parts of them, for a while, one new development is the printing of capacitors within the PCB while being printed.

Creating and then connecting capacitors to circuit boards is often a long and complex task, and while parts of it have been made easier over the years, no development will have as big an impact as this.

There are variances of less than 1% from samples checked, which is promising for such a task, where human error can introduce much bigger variances. The time this will save on each unit will improve efficiency a lot, allowing more PCBs to be created in less time. This is especially important for large orders and opens up new options for what else additive manufacturing can do.

Ensuring the quality remains high

While we’re always looking for new ways to improve our designs and processes, we’re committed to taking our time to evaluate what would work best for us and our customers. This means we try these new technologies and procedures and test PCBs in a range of situations to ensure we can continue to supply reliable and efficient components.

Even once a new process or piece of technology is released, it doesn’t mean it should be used straight away. In this case, the theory would have been promising but it takes a lot of testing before it becomes a viable option for PCB manufacturing. Even when a technology is deemed useful, it might not always be refined enough to deliver the results like our customers expect. Knowing when to invest and when to wait is a big decision.

To find out more about our PCB manufacturing process, get in touch with the team at UK Electronics today.