Factors that affect prototype PCB price

Due to various factors that affect PCB price, many electronics manufacturers purchaser find it hard to make full understand of PCB price calculation, Some sales man newly joined the PCB industry do not know the price structure of PCB are also difficult to quote a reasonalbe price. Shenzhen China PCB manufacturer SysPCB here give some brief explains.

What we describe here is mainly of a variety of technical factors affecting prototype PCB prices. Other factors affecting the cost of the PCB board are not going to be explained, such as board circuit board manufacturers' geographical location, circuit board manufacturers' process strong technique, marketing positioning of PCB manufacturers and quality and so on. We explain a prerequisite in a relatively fixed PCB supplier cooperation model for PCB manufacturing.

1. The first impact of prototype PCB cost is whether expedited, because prototype PCB require relatively short time, factors affected by time is large, usually single or double side PCB, if 24 hours expedited delivery may be charged expedited fee of about $ 50-150.

2. the cost of flying probe test, for small PCB orders, like less than 0.1sq.m or simple PCB design normally charge no flying probe test fee. If PCB design is complex and involve a relatively larger area, electrical testing occupy circuit board manufacturers man power for making testing data and testing machine, so there will be some flying probe charge. For PCB order with area more than 3sq.m, flying probe test is not economic anymore, especially for PCB with repeated orders, E-test fixture is used.

3. the cost of surface treatment, cost difference of circuit boards with different surface treatment is very large, some Rare Metals such as gold and nickel is very expensive, so the immersion gold PCB is about $20-40 higher in general than hot air level on board for prototype PCB.

4. Soldermask costs, in the production of most PCB, solder mask characters have chosen green color and silkscreen white, if the board with special color needs, and very little orders the manufacturers will waste a lot of ink, so prices may be high when specifying a certain brand ink or the use of other color instead of green soldermask white silkscreen.

5. Board fee, this is mainly regarding PCB board size, the larger the size of the PCB board will consuming more of raw substrate, the raw substrate is the biggest potion of A circuit board cost, so prices are generally depended by size plus some other fixed fees like engineering fee and electrical test fee etc.

6. Other fixed costs such as engineering fees and film costs, film costs base price is unchanged, but the more the layer of circuit board, the more sheets is consumed, so the costs will be higher. Engineering costs mainly related to engineering data processing and production tools, the number of layers of PCB production, the more time take into engineering of it, the higher of the project costs, but the costs of certain layer are generally fixed.