All PCB manufacturers have to train their personnel in-house to some degree or another.The more skilled the planning, manufacturing and inspection personnel, the more certain quality circuit boards will be produced on time and delivered when promised.
How many PCB manufacturers do you know who break delivery promises on an all too regular basis?
The more skilled the process engineers and inspectors, the lower the level of value added at which any potential faults are found.
Planning
When the manufacturing details (usually Gerber files for the layers, plus a drill file) and customer specifications are received for a PCB, the information has to be front end engineered.That is, the number of circuits per panel to be processed, the panel size, and the layout of the pcbs on that panel all have to be decided . These parameters are used to determine the size and layout of the phototools required to produce the circuit layers, plus the stepping of the drill file.Surface mount boards may also require that the PCB manufacture produce a suitable solderpaste phototool to his customer’s specifications for the assembly of components onto the PCBs after manufacture.
At Elite Circuits, a “traveller” and job bag is produced as part of the front-end engineering. The traveller is identified by the relevant job bag number, and lists the operations involved in the manufacture of the circuit. This traveller goes with the production batch of circuits and each operation is signed off by the respective operator once
completed.The job bag is used to contain supplier details and batch numbers of base laminates and inks used, as well as the phototools used during manufacture. The completed traveller is added to the job bag for traceability and then filed when the order has been completed.
