How DFM Reduces PCB Manufacturing Cost and Increases Reliability

This Gold Phoenix PCB Knowledge Center article explains how Design for Manufacturability (DFM) helps reduce PCB manufacturing cost and increase reliability.

Manufacturing cost can be strongly influenced by decisions made during the design stage, which is why DFM is important before PCB fabrication begins. Thus, design counts. That also works in PCB (Printed Circuit Board) production.

Circuit designers come up with their designs based on their unique thoughts and function expectations of end products. However, they care little about manufacturing. Once improper elements are directly used on manufacturing line, defects will definitely be caused. Worse still, some designs are never manufacturable. All of the above issues indicate the significance of DFM (Design for Manufacturability).

Actually, DFM does help to reduce the cost of PCB fabrication and increase the reliability of PCBs. DFM is an important part of PCB design because it addresses manufacturing constraints before fabrication.

What Is DFM?

Design for Manufacturability for PCB is also a part of circuit design that aims to make PCBs easily and economically produced through the optimization of design details.

DFM usually occurs prior to real PCB fabrication and is normally carried out by PCB manufacturers since they understand more PCB production details and are aware of the positive meaning of a trivial consideration on design optimization to the quality of the whole batch of PCBs. More significance can be seen on larger volumes of PCB fabrication.

DFM check not only works on bare PCB board fabrication, but on PCB assembly as well. DFM check items for bare PCB fabrication mainly include:

• Board thickness

• Board size

• Routing tab

• V-cut design

• Tracing/Spacing

• Via hole

• Surface finish

• Golden finger

• Panelization

And, DFM check items concerning PCB assembly mainly include:

• Pad design

• Components orientation

• Component placement spacing

• Reflow soldering pad design

• Fiducial mark

Why Is DFM Important for PCB Manufacturing?

Purpose of DFM Check

DFM check aims to solve issues before official manufacturing to avoid design elements incompatible with manufacturing requirement. Finally, PCB products can be smoothly made with extreme ease and product yields can be increased.

a. Reliability Improvement

Excellent quality of final products has been the common target as far as electronics manufacturers are concerned. DFM can help ensuring function achievement of products and optimizing their appearance because some essential elements that may lead to manufacturing defects have already been properly dealt with before manufacturing. And higher reliability can be obtained through optimization in terms of some design aspects. For example, a high-quality design of pad is beneficial for the smooth running of reflow soldering. As a result, components can be solidly fixed onto board, normally working as is designed.

b. Cost Reduction

In the process of design for manufacturability, as manufacturing procedure is taken into consideration, some unnecessary manufacturing steps can be saved to have cost decreased. Besides, as manufacturing procedure becomes simplified, some tools, equipment and labor can be also saved, which is especially important when it comes to mass production. And, the optimizations on board design can help reduce the real estate of board with PCB manufacturing cost going down as well.

c. Cycle Time Cut

The sooner electronics products enter market, the more profits they will generate. DFM aims to solve hidden danger at the early phase of manufacturing. Accordingly, issues possibly caused in manufacturing process will be decreased. The whole process’s smooth running makes cycle time cut so that products can be rapidly made. Besides, manufacturing staff don’t need to adjust manufacturing parameters once some issues take place in the previous batch of PCBs, which is beneficial to large-volume production.