How a Fabricator Looks at Your PCB Design 

Like most designers, you are focused on designing a PCB to the electrical and form-factor specifications. Your fabricator is mostly paying attention to those aspects of your design which affect yield, costs, and delivery. So, if you would put yourself in the fabricators shoes for a moment and see some of the checking they will perform on your design data prior to committing it to fabrication. We will highlight the different areas in a typical PCB fabrication process and identify where DFM issues are likely to show up and what the fabricator is looking for.

Once aware of some of the areas where your design might require correction by the fabricator to achieve higher yields, you can implement them as you perform your design, rather than waiting for them to be discovered by the fabricator.

Beginning with an overview of the PCB fabrication process below:

Inner layer processing>>>Lamination>>>Outer layer processing>>>
Auxiliary processes>>>De-Panelization>>>Test and Inspection.

Using conventional multilayer boards as example.On multi-layer PCBs, the inner layers have to be processed first, and then laminated together for outer layer processing. Once that is completed, there are several steps called auxiliary processes that have to be performed. The fabricator will then need to de-panel the PCBs and finish with test and inspection.

In the recent issue of Circuitree magazine they outline a few of the important rules that will determine if the design can be fabricated at high yields. Keep in mind that there are over 270 of these rules that could be implemented and checked.

This is a 20,000 foot view…for a much more detailed overview of this process, please log on to the Oct 2010 edition of www.circuitree.com.

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