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Printed Circuit Board Fabrication

What is a PCB Silkscreen on Printed Circuit Boards?

What is a PCB Silkscreen on Printed Circuit Boards?

Were you one of those kids who loved to take apart every electronic thing in your house? If so, you’ve probably pulled out your fair share of green printed circuit boards. It’s cool to hold them and to run your fingers over all their little metallic bumps. When you brought them close to your eye, you could even see little white designs, numbers, and letters drawn on them. What is this mysterious language? It’s called the PCB silkscreen.

The PCB Silkscreen

Silkscreen is the white and human readable letters, normally used to identify components, test points, PCB and PCBA part numbers, warning symbols, company logos, date codes and manufacturer marks.  Silk-screening requires specially formulated inks. The standard color is white, but you can also select red, blue, black, yellow, etc.  Most silkscreens are written in white ink, because it is easy to see against the green solder-mask, but silkscreens can actually be any color. If you take apart enough electronics, you are bound to find PCBs with gray, red, and even blue silkscreens.

Adding the silkscreen layer onto a printed circuit board is the final step in the fabrication process. These shapes, numbers, and letters really aren’t some new language. They act as basically an instruction manual, telling workers how to assemble the board as part of the larger device. They can also communicate the function of each of the pins.  Screen-printing is done when the boards are still penalized prior to the application of the final finish or routing/v-scoring.

PCB layout designers sometimes forget to double-check their silk screen layers before sending designs to PCB fabrication. Designers should avoid putting ident over component pads, they should avoid using excessively tiny text and should allow for registration tolerances.

Looking for a new PCB manufacturer? Contact ACME PCB today.

Box Build

What is Box Build Assembly?

ACME PCB assembly is working to meet the growing demand for tabletop “box builds” we have a dedicated team for each department, including covering the purchasing, electronics engineering, contract manufacturing services, and testing.

Our team will support all your electro-mechanical projects from the initial stages of design conception and prototyping through volume production. ACME PCB assembly provides cost-effective turnkey manufacturing solutions to meet your specific project requirements and timeline.

This results in a full turnkey solution to meet your business’s needs. With the continuous development of suppliers from the component level to metal and plastic fabricators has enabled us to meet the most demanding schedules with full PCB assembly, Yun Industrial ACME PCB Assembly also has a clear competitive edge in the total turnkey market.

What is a Box Build?

A box build assembly is just like the name says. It involves us assembling various PCB (Printed Circuit Boards) connected through various wiring and with other cables. This process includes PCB fabrication, its installation and then connecting all the components with various wire and cable to get a complete system. This system has many sub-assemblies and lots of other electronic components that are installed in the assembly.

There are many different benefits in using our box build assembly services.  One of the main benefits of using this service is to reduce the overall costs while maintaining high-quality control of the system.

PCB box build assembly services are used in many different fields.  ACME PCB assembly is known for making reliable, safe and secure box builds.  The most common industry where this system is used is the computer industry. But other than the computer industry there are other industries like the medical field, aerospace, telecommunication fields, and many other fields.

Over 25 years in the printed circuit board assembly service business, ACME Printed Circuit Board Assembly knows how to making customer satisfy, check out our Business Hall of Fame Award.

PCB Assembly service in Los Angeles

Printed Circuit Board Assembly Service Provider

Electronic Contract Manufacturing Service

Acme Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCB Assembly service provider) is located in Carson, California. We have a 16,000 square foot facility with the best equipment (Fuji assembly line) that allows us to offer high-quality PCB assembly at competitive prices.

Our ISO 9000 (9001:2015) certification is a source of pride for us.  It indicates that we provide measurable high-quality electronic contract manufacturing services that meet or exceed customer expectations.

Whether you need Printed Circuit Board (PCB) assembly, consignment assembly or turnkey material-procurement assembly, we have what is necessary to manage your entire project efficiently. With over 26 years of experience in Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) we learned that reasonable assembly cost, high-quality service, on-time delivery and good communications are the keys that keep our customers happy and is how we made our business successful.

ACME PCB Assembly is flexible in meeting your requirements. We have offered Lead-Free (Pb-Free) soldering since 2005. Please review Design to Avoid Tin Wiskers for RoHS compliant (Lead-Free) assembly.

Good communication with our customers is a key to our success. People do business with people because they choose to, not because they have to… You can always find others who provide similar services. We believe that it is the personal connection that makes the difference.

ACME Printed Circuit Board Assembly

Electronic contract manufacturing for printed circuit boards assembly that includes SMT assembly, prototype boards builds, PoP (Package on Package), BGA assembly with X-ray inspection, through-hole and mixed board assembly.

ACME PCB Assembly has a IPC 610 Class III, and IPC J-001 certified instructor in-house for training and quality assurance. As a electronic contract manufacturing service provider, we provide service from product design all the way to box builds. Our services include:

 

 

Recycling Unused PCB

Is it Possible to Recycle Your Unused Printed Circuit Boards?

We will be discussing the issue of PCB recycling, if it’s even possible, how it is done and what can we do as electronics design engineers to create more recyclable PCBs. When we say PCB we are meaning a PCB without any components on it.  Most electronic devices found out there have their components sitting in a nice looking Printed Circuit Board or PCB.  Since electronic devices are in high demand, PCBs are everywhere. Making sure their materials can be collected and reused instead of just throwing them into a landfill would potentially be a smart and environmentally sensible move if performed properly.

Remember that large order of printed circuit boards you ordered? You thought it would be a good idea to have a surplus of parts on hand in case you needed to increase production of your product line. Unfortunately, that product got discontinued, so now you have a huge stash of PCBs taking up room in your warehouse and on your accounting books. It is time to trash them?

Not so fast! In many cases, printed circuit boards can be reworked and modified. Do you have another electronic or computerized product in the works? Then contact ACME PCB Assembly  we may be able to re-purpose your PCBs. Our workers are highly trained in de-soldering and re-soldering surface mounted electronic components. We have also invested in specialized equipment that can assist us in these efforts.

Can you recycle your old PCB?

Yes and no, before coming to a final decision let’s first see what a PCB is made of. A PCB is basically a layered sandwich of copper and FR-4. FR-4 is a fiberglass with an epoxy resin that has the purpose of bonding the fiber together and as an adhesive, it is also flame resistant. Apart from that, you can also find tin and small traces of gold and silver.

Don’t throw out unused printed circuit boards.

Give us a call today to learn how we could possibly turn them into components for your next big product!

Printed Circuit Board Fabrication

Commonly Used Terms in PCB Assembly

What the Heck Is Your PCB Vendor Talking About? – Common Terms for PCB Assembly

Printed Circuit Board FabricationEvery industry has its established lingo, which helps its members communicate more efficiently. If you are on the outside looking in, however, it can seem like they are speaking a foreign tongue. This becomes a problem when you need to work with vendors on ordering printed circuit boards for your device or your prototype. If you’ve gotten lost while trying to speak to your vendor (SMP, SME, SMD?), then you’ve come to the right place. Here is our no-nonsense guide on the most common terms in the printed circuit board industry:

  • PCB – Stands for Printed Circuit Board. Printed circuit boards are found in every single device that uses computing and data. PCBs act as the “highway” in transferring data between components within a device.
  • THM – Stands for Through-Hole Mounting (also known as Thru-Hole Mounting). THM is an older assembly technology that mounts components on a PCB by drilling holes through the printed circuit board and placing component leads into the drilled holes. THM has largely been replaced by SMT assembly, though there are still some situations in which THM is preferred.
  • SMT – Stands for Surface Mount Technology. SMT was first introduced in the 1960s and rose to prominence in the 1980s. Today, it is the dominant form of PCB assembly. SMT does not require drilling holes through a printed circuit board. Its components are smaller than THM and can be placed on both sides of the PCB. This allows for a denser allotment of components and a more powerful PCB.
  • Substrate – The substrate is the actual board upon which wires and components are placed. It gives the PCB its structure and also insulates conductive parts. PCBs can be made from a variety of different substrates. All PCB substrates are non-conductive. Common substrate materials are: FR-4 (a fiberglass-epoxy laminate), Teflon, ceramics, specialized polymers
  • Traces – Traces are the things that electrically connect the connectors to the components. The most common material for the traces is copper. The copper layer of a PCB goes on top of the substrate. In double-sided PCBs, copper traces are placed on both sides of the PCB.
  • Soldermask – Have you ever wondered why almost all PCBs are green? This is the soldermask. This layer goes on top of the copper layer and functions to insulate the copper traces. It prevents the highly conductive copper traces from making contact with other metal components of the PCB.

While this is far from an exhaustive list of common terms used in the PCB industry, hopefully this guide will help you better understand and communicate with your printed circuit board manufacturer.

Contact Us for a quote.