As a PCB manufacturer, you will run into a fairly typical problem; misprinted circuit boards. Although the precision of machines reduces your overall misprint rate, there is still room for error, such as boards that are loaded the wrong way or slip from side to side during the printing process. Quality control measures should catch most of these, but then you are stuck with them. Here are three things you can do with the misprints:
Give Them to Local Schools to Teach Science and Tech Courses
The misprinted boards will not work for their intended purpose, but that does not render them entirely useless. High schools and tech colleges can use the misprints to learn about printing circuit boards, and how your industry works. The students can also use the misprints in their own projects, which often resolve the issues of the misprinted circuitry.
Strip the Boards and Recycle Them as E-Waste
Most printed circuit board companies tend to strip the boards of reusable components and then recycle the boards as e-waste. The boards are destroyed, melted down, and reformed by the e-waste recycling companies before the boards are shipped back to you, free of defects. At the very least, it saves you some expense of just throwing the boards away.
Erase Just the Mistake(s) and Reprint Those Areas
If your factory technology is up-to-date and up-to-snuff, then you can easily remove the printed mistakes and just reprint the areas on the boards that need to be reprinted. This works best when the mistakes are caught early on in the printing process, and not after there is an entire lateral shift of the printed material. All you have to do is send the defect boards back through and program your machines to print just the parts that your workers erased.
Put the Reprinted Boards on Hold for Testing
If you decide to reprint the boards, or the client has requested that you reprint the boards instead of paying for new boards, set the reprinted ones aside. These will need to be tested thoroughly to make sure they conduct signals properly and send information over the lines in the way that they should. Successful reprints are only as successful as their tests and trial run. Otherwise, they are just scrap and you have to eat the costs for the defects and reprinting process so that new boards can be printed for the client(s).
Share25 September 2017
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