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info.chetumaxsales@gmail.com
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A Complete Guide to PCB Fabrication: From Design to Finished Board
Introduction
- Why understanding full PCB fab process helps buyers, designers & manufacturers.
- What affects cost, quality, and lead time.
1.Design Phase
- Gathering specs (electrical, thermal, mechanical).
- Creating schematic → Layout (component placement, trace routing).
- Design Rule Checks (DRC) & Design for Manufacturing (DFM).
2.Material Selection
- Choosing substrate (rigid vs flexible vs metal-core).
- Selecting the right CCL: FR-4, High Tg, Halogen-Free, Polyimide etc.
3.Fabrication Steps
- Imaging & photoresist spraying
- Etching copper, removing unwanted copper
- Drilling (vias, holes)
- Plating & copper buildup (for multilayer boards)
- Lamination of layers (for multilayer PCB)
- Solder mask & silkscreen printing
- Surface finish options (HASL, ENIG, OSP etc)
- Profiling & cutting to shape
4.Testing and Quality Control
- Electrical testing (shorts, opens)
- Thermal / warpage testing
- Visual inspection, AOI & possibly X-ray
5.Final Delivery & Cost Drivers
- How materials, layer count, copper weight, finish affect cost.
- How lead time, batch size add up.
How Chetumax Sales & M M Enterprise assist you:
- Shows deep technical competence.
- Helps customers understand why some quotes are higher (because of specific material/finish choices).
- Helps avoid surprises (e.g. customer chooses wrong material => rejects or performance issues).
Step 1
Design and Output
Step 2
From File to Film
Step 3
Printing the Inner layers
Step 4
Removing the Unwanted Copper
Step 5
Layer Alignment and Optical Inspection
Step 6
Layer-up and Bond
Step 7
PCB Drill
Step 8
Plating and Copper Deposition
Step 9
Outer Layer Imaging
Step 10
Plating
Step 11
Final Etching
Step 12
Solder Mask Application
Step 13
Surface Finish
Step 14
Silkscreen
Step 15
Electrical Test
Step 16
Profiling and V-Scoring
- Circuit boards should be rigorously compatible with, a PCB layout created by the designer using PCB design software. Commonly-used PCB design software includes Altium Designer, OrCAD, Pads, KiCad, Eagle etc. NOTE: Before PCB fabrication, designers should inform their contract manufacturer about the PCB design software version used to design the circuit since it helps avoid issues caused by discrepancies.
- Once the PCB design is approved for production, designers export the design into format their manufacturers support. The PCB industry birthed extended Gerber as the perfect output format. Different PCB design software possibly calls for different Gerber file generation steps, they all encode comprehensive vital information including copper tracking layers, drill drawing, apertures, component notations and other options.