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.

At Conclusive we understand that communication and project overview are crucial for you. We provide you with multiple communication channels and regularly inform you about the progress to ensure that you and our design team stay on the same page. Contact us today—let’s talk about your project.

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!

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