The Benefits of Using Custom PCB Design Service

When designing an electrical or electronic system, product designers may find themselves asking “Should we be spinning a custom PCB (Printed Circuit Board), or hand-wiring on a perfboard or breadboard?” This article discusses some of the advantages and disadvantages of Designing a Custom PCB identified during a group discussion of StarFish Medical electronic engineers.

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There are three reasons people often shy away from spinning a custom PCB:

• Flexibility: “We can’t commit to a particular design yet.”
• Cost: “It will be too expensive.”
• Timeline: “We need this sooner than that.”

Flexibility

A custom PCB is not an inherently reconfigurable thing. When a product is in its prototype phase, the appeal of soldering something up on a work bench that can easily be changed later can be very enticing. For example, you realize that there is a feature needed that you didn’t include, or you discover a hardware bug.  A hand-built electronics assembly isn’t locked into a design that takes a few weeks from the moment gerber files go out the door until a fully assembled board is on your bench. Concerns around flexibility fall into two basic categories: “What if the requirements for the board change?” and “What if we discover a hardware bug?”

“What if the requirements for this board change?”

If you ask yourself this question, then subsequently ask yourself: “Have I fully thought through my system architecture?” and “Have I consulted with the mechanical teams, ID team, etc. and fully determined the requirements of this board?”

The fact that a PCB locks you into a design is not always a bug, but often a feature. It forces you to plan out the system architecture, which often results in details getting fleshed out that would become an afterthought if you approached the design in a way that didn’t require commitments.

In some cases, the reason that you’re concerned about requirements changing may be because the project is expected to change. Some projects need significant requirement flexibility for prototypes. This can mean that custom electrical components normally designed as custom PCBs may need to be built in other ways.

“What if we discover a hardware bug?”

Changing requirements can be relatively easy on a designer’s nerves compared to that exciting-but-also-uncomfortable period of time when you’ve designed your board, the fab house has your gerber files, the assembly house has your bill of materials and your pick and place files, and you’re waiting awkward weeks to get your board so you can test it and confirm that it actually works.

The first spin of a PCB for a prototype usually needs some tweaks. If you design the PCB recognizing it will likely need at least minor modifications, then altering a custom PCB with an X-Acto knife and a soldering iron is often no more difficult than modifying a perfboard.

All this being said, building some circuits on a breadboard ahead of time is a great way to de-risk a design. Ideally, this will quickly morph into a custom PCB moving forward.

Cost

The cost of a PCB varies hugely on the size of the board, number of layers, how many components are on it, and many other factors. The material cost of a breadboard or perfboard is clearly significantly less than the design time.  Focus on how to reduce cost by reducing the time that it takes to develop the product. Do not worry too much about material costs. Experience has taught me that when project budgets balloon out of control, it happens primarily due to labour costs and not to material costs.

This invites the question: Is the labour involved in designing a PCB less than building something on a perfboard or breadboard? In the short run, it often isn’t. But in the long run, it often is. This is related to a few factors:

• Custom PCBs often require less re-work than an electronics assembly that’s been built by hand due to their inherent superior reliability.
• Once a PCB has been designed and built, the schematics, gerber files, and bill of materials can be re-used to cheaply build a second PCB. This is handy if a second prototype is needed but wasn’t originally expected. This happens all the time.
• Schematics can be recycled for future iterations of the same device. Once you’ve designed a PCB for a prototype, you can save design time when designing your alpha.

Timeline

A tight timeline is always intimidating. The need to meet a tight timeline often means parts of your system that could be custom PCBs will need to be hand-wired in some way or will need to be off-the-shelf components.

One option for shortening the timeline for a PCB is to order a bare PCB and assemble the PCB in-house. Fab + shipping time required to get a bare PCB in the door can easily be just a week.

Short timelines will mean that you may have to build custom wiring harnesses that you’d prefer to be absorbed into a custom board. They may also mean that you’ll have to hand-modify some off-the-shelf components or modify custom boards you designed instead of re-spinning them.

Advantages of Designing a Custom PCB

Technical Advantages

When you design a custom PCB, you have control of the location of every piece of copper down to a few thousandths of an inch. This control allows you to more easily mitigate parasitic properties of your circuits. This is enhanced by the fact that you are not limited to through-hole components, which have higher inherent parasitic inductance than their surface-mount equivalents usually do.

Appearance and Perception of Your Device

Technical advantages aside, a PCB simply looks more professional. Some engineers believe that the way something looks is irrelevant. How well it works is ultimately all that matters. However, a custom PCB will significantly affect the perception of your product in the eyes of clients and investors. Appearance and Perception matter.

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Custom PCB manufacturing has numerous benefits. It often leads to lower manufacturing costs, better performance, time savings in embedded system assembly, and adaptation to your product's size constraints. What is more, this is a way to gain some additional advantages, such as lower weight, which are crucial for certain types of devices (e.g., smartphones). Do you want to learn more? Keep reading!

7 Custom PCB Manufacturing Advantages

If you know what a printed circuit board (PCB) is, you realize that there are two main types of PCBs: standard and custom. The first ones are widely available and have some advantages, but in reality, they might often be unable to fulfill all your business goals. Custom PCBs, on the other hand, come with unique benefits that will help you achieve success with your product. What are they? Take a look below.

Enhanced Performance

When designing an embedded system, you know what functions it needs to have—you usually create a thorough list of requirements. If you were to look for standard PCBs, you’d need to find ones that meet all your criteria. This could lead to them being bigger, more advanced, or power-consuming; it might also be so that there are no standard PCBs that meet your requirements closely.

The main advantage of custom PCB manufacturing is that this is no longer a problem. You can design a PCB that is precisely suited to meet your requirements and optimized for the device it will be used in. The end result? Your PCB is much more efficient without consuming too many resources.

Cost Savings

If you opt for large-scale production, custom PCBs are cheaper than standard PCBs. This is because they are optimized for material wastage. Why does this only occur for large-scale production? Because then you can standardize the process, which is key to achieving said cost savings.

Time Savings

In general, custom PCB design services are much faster regarding prototyping. As a result, you can test your printed circuit board faster, which leads to a shorter time to market. Naturally, this benefit depends on the team that will be designing your PCB layout and wiring, but generally, it will take less time.

The Right Size and Weight

Depending on the type of device you want to produce, the size and weight of your PCB might or might not be crucial. The main benefit of custom printed circuit boards is that they are always better for the former.

Since a custom PCB is designed with your specific device in mind, it can be adjusted to fit the strict size or weight constraints. Naturally, this might require you to use a different (often more expensive) technology, but you can balance the costs and size requirements to find the golden means.

Greater Quality Control

Whether you design your PCB in-house or use outsourced services, you have greater quality control over the final design. You know what happens at every step of the process and can intervene if something fails to meet your standards. This is impossible with regular PCBs.

Higher Quality

In most scenarios, a custom PCB will be of a higher quality than a standard one. Since such printed circuit boards have only as many elements as needed for the particular project, they are usually built out of better materials than their regular counterparts. Naturally, this is a general advantage, and whether the quality will truly be higher depends on your agreement with the design team.

Fast Assembly

Since custom PCBs are tailored to your final product and the hardware used to build it, they are much easier and faster to assemble than in the case of standard printed circuit boards. This is crucial if you:

• need to produce large volumes of your devices due to an increase in demand,
• want to optimize your manufacturing costs by increasing productivity.

Does Custom PCB Manufacturing Have Any Disadvantages?

We sang praises of custom PCB manufacturing benefits, but does it mean that they are perfect? No! There are some cons to this solution, such as:

• difficulty to revise and troubleshoot them,
• higher demand for resources and expertise in the design process,
• the potential for the components to become obsolete in two to three years due to technological developments.

As a result, there might be single situations in which standard PCBs are better than their custom counterparts. Nevertheless, in most cases, the latter wins.

The Takeaway

Custom PCB manufacturing has multiple advantages and is an excellent choice if you need a specific printed circuit board type that matches your project requirements. It is not only better for the final product but also for your business, as custom PCB design might lead to lower manufacturing costs and time savings. Therefore, we recommend custom PCB design services if you build embedded systems. If you need excellent PCB design, contact us at Conclusive!

You might also read: What Is PCB Design and What Is It Used For?

FAQ

1. What are the main advantages of custom PCB manufacturing?

Custom PCB manufacturing offers several advantages, including enhanced performance, cost savings, faster prototyping, size and weight optimization, greater quality control, and improved assembly efficiency. These benefits make custom PCBs ideal for applications requiring precise functionality and high efficiency.

2. How does custom PCB manufacturing improve performance?

Custom PCBs are designed specifically for the intended device, ensuring optimized circuit layouts, reduced power consumption, and better integration with components. Unlike standard PCBs, which may include unnecessary features, custom PCBs provide higher efficiency and reliability in embedded systems.

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3. Why is custom PCB manufacturing important for size and weight optimization?