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Choosing a PCB
Fabricator in 3 Steps By Stanley Bentley, Technical Director — North America, ICAPE
desire to attack new and more challenging markets. It is important to understand the reasons for the change to prioritize and define the critical characteristics of the new supplier. Building a high-technology PCB factory takes years to construct
T
and outfit and more time (and money) to create and maintain the hun- dreds of processes that are required. The selection process can be as crit- ical as defining the characteristics. I recommend a multistep process.
Step one is to choose a partner in this process that can provide you with multiple choices that they have already validated. This partner will sort through the literature, perform the plant visits, and validate the quality systems. They will also determine if the fabricators have the processes and equipment for the technology that you have de- fined in your critical characteristics. The axiom “a craftsman can build fine furniture with only hand
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tools” is not true of PCBs. The demands of today’s technology require that the processing equipment and the chemistry all play in harmo- ny and be “capable” of the technology. The machines to fabricate even simple PCBs are impressive and expensive. A plant tour can be very overwhelming. How do you determine if
the machines you are being shown can really produce your technolo- gy? The painful truth is that you probably can’t unless you are from the industry. This is the value proposition of your partner.
Step two is to have the selected suppliers (or supplier) produce an actual PCB from the OEM’s PCB specifications and Gerber files. It is straightforward for the OEM (or CM) to populate and test the PCB. Very few companies have the laboratory facilities to make this deter- mination. It is risky to assume that the PCB is good just from testing the assembly.
PRESS-CONNECTOR TECHNOLOGY
Step three is to send a sample PCB from each of the competing sup- pliers to a laboratory that can perform the testing methods outlined in the IPC-TM-650 to validate the PCB. The laboratory will perform the same testing if only one supplier is being validated or if several are being compared. While the laboratory testing will be customized to the individual requirements of the OEM, there are some basic fea- tures that all PCBs must meet. The ICAPE USA Analytical Laboratory and Technical Center
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(part of ICAPE Group) recommends the following as a minimum set of PCB validation tests: visual inspection to the IPC-A-600 (current revision); electrical testing (bare board test) to the original designer’s net list; XRF measurement of the surface finish (ENIG, silver, tin, HASL, etc.); cleanliness testing in µg/in2 (base level testing does not include ion chromatography); DSC (differential scanning calorime- ter) for laminate Tg; and microsection analysis. Of all of these, the microsection analysis is the most critical.
With the microsection, all the internal features of the PCB that de- termine its long-term reliability can be evaluated. The IPC has de- fined 42 different defects that can be found in a single microsection. One additional test performed by the ICAPE USA Lab is to per-
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form a solder float of a via hole and a component hole prior to micro- section. The solder float will tell the examiner two things: solderabil- ity of the PCB surface finish and through-hole quality. The sample is floated on the solder bath, the only way for the solder to flow up through the hole to the top surface is to be pulled through by capil- lary attraction. The magic of this test is that the interior surface of the plated barrel must be very solderable and free of voids. This one test can tell the examiner many things about the quality of the PCB and direct the examiner to further testing. Following the compilation of the laboratory data, the customer
can determine if a new supplier is equivalent to the existing suppli- er, they can decide between competing suppliers, or they can verify that a new supplier is technology-capable for their application. Two of the three steps can be performed by the OEM (samples and labo- ratory). However, the value of step one, a supply chain partner, is to quickly arrive at step two with the confidence that the process will be
46268 % 317-405-9427 E-mail:
stan.bentley@
divsys-icape.com.com Web:
www.icape-group.com r
successful on the first try. Contact: ICAPE USA, 8102 Zionsville Road, Indianapolis, IN
here are many reasons why it is necessary to qualify a new PCB fabricator. There are the issues of quality, delivery and pricing. The need also may be driven by changes in the market, or the
July, 2021
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