Description
What is a circuit card assembly?
Circuit card assembly is the same thing as PCBA Assembly, and it is just a different way people call it. It is to mount the components on the PCB to achieve the circuit connection through soldering and other techniques.
What is the circuit card assembly manufacturing process?
Material Preparation
Material preparation is the first step in the circuit card assembly process, and it involves putting together the PCB board, all of the electronic components, soldering materials (including solder wire, solder paste, etc), and any auxiliary materials. The first and most important material is the circuit board, as it is the basis of the circuit card assembly process, and the quality of the PCB board will have a direct impact on the product. Meanwhile, the circuit card is the first step in which you prepare materials. it will be vital that there are plenty of quality inspection processes of the PCB board, so they will be the same as the design.
Printing
Printing is an important step in the circuit card assembly process, and the designed circuit pattern gets transferred onto the circuit board through printing. There are different kinds of printing techniques, including stencil printing, inkjet printing, and laser printing. Each printing will affect the precision and quality of the circuit card assembly, and laser printing provides high precision and resolution at a higher cost. Stencil printing is the most popular one due to its low cost and high speed; even the stencil printing’s precision is not as good as that of laser printing.
It is very necessary to control the pressure, speed, and ink volume, as these settings must be adjusted based on the PCB material, circuit complexity, and printing requirements.
SMT (Surface Mount Technology) Placement
SMT is to mount the components onto the PCB using the pick and place machines, and the accuracy and efficiency of these machines will impact the circuit card assembly quality and production time. The placement pressure, speed, and positioning must be carefully controlled during the placement.
Soldering
Soldering establishes electrical connections between components and the circuit board, it can influence the joint quality and reliability. There are wave soldering, reflow soldering, and laser soldering. Wave soldering is the most popular one due to its speed and cost, while reflow soldering can be better for the joint quality and stability
Testing
After the circuit card assembly production is finished, it is essential to do the test per the customer’s requirements. For example: PCBA Functional Test and aging test. We need to use different kinds of equipment during the test process, such as multimeters, oscilloscopes, and power supplies…, Meanwhile the customized test program and test data also need to be done. The test result will determine the whole circuit board assembly quality and performance
Quality Control
Quality control of PCBA is the last step of the circuit card assembly, and it will require complete quality checking and evaluation for the circuit card assembly to ensure it can meet the design. The normal quality control method includes the first article inspection, In-process inspection, and cross inspection. The first article inspection of the circuit card assembly can check whether the production line is stable and reliable. In-process inspection can monitor each production process, while sampling inspection can evaluate the whole production quality level. It is necessary to make strict quality control and test standards, and train the inspection workers in time.
Find the Right Manufacturer for your circuit card assembly
As a circuit card assembly supplier in China, FX PCB has strict quality control for each of the PCBA we ship to customers, and we are an ISO9001 supplier for the circuit card assembly in China. Please send us your Gerber file and BOM to get a quote from us.
