With the aim of always providing useful suggestions, we want to inform you about some “simple rules” to keep in mind to “optimize” the technical documentation to be delivered to our technical office to improve the data collection and processing for the assembly and testing of an electronic board.
Prime, after building significant experience with our customers, has decided to develop and certify a unique data handling system.
Prime is aware of the diversity of resources and needs of our customers. For this reason, we provide considerable flexibility regarding data acquisition for electronic board assembly.
To correctly assemble an electronic board, our technical office needs:
– CAD FILE
– CENTERING FILE
– GERBER FILE
– BILL OF MATERIALS (BOM)
– ASSEMBLY DRAWINGS
– SPECIAL NOTES
1 – CAD FILE – CENTERING FILE – GERBER FILE
Prime has chosen to use the Valor ODB++ CAD system. This CAD system “is able to store all the information needed for printed circuit board manufacturing, SMT component assembly, and testing without requiring additional files”.
Most CAD software can process this type of file.
For information on how to create this type of file in your CAD software, download the guide here.
If you still have problems or questions, feel free to contact our technical office.
As an alternative to the ODB++ CAD file, you can send us Gerber files for PCB creation, centering files for SMT assembly machine programming, and a CAD file for electrical testing.
2 – BILL OF MATERIALS (BOM)
The bill of materials, also called BOM (Bills of Materials), is a text file containing all information about components to be assembled on an electronic board.
This file must contain the following specific information:
| – COMPONENT REFERENCE; The component names (e.g., C12, R123). | – DESCRIPTION; The component description (e.g., 0603 1%) |
| – VALUE; The component values (e.g., 2.2nF, 120K). | – QUANTITY “; quantity” of components. |
Below you’ll find an example of a simple bill of materials data:
| QUANTITY | COMPONENT REFERENCES | VALUE | DESCRIPTION |
| 1 | C12 | 2.2nF | Tantalum Cap. 10V 10% X7R 0805 |
| 3 | R1,R2,R3 | 120 | Res. 5% 1/4W 0603 |
| 3 | R4-R6 | 330K | Res. 5% 1/4W 0805 |
We have optimized the creation of a bill of materials based on our internal needs. Here’s a simple example:
In this example, the component source (supplied by Prime or by the customer) and assembly notes have been added.
| PRODUCT CODE: | TEST_BOARD | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| SUBSYSTEM: SMT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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3 – ASSEMBLY DRAWING
The technical documentation must include the assembly drawing of both sides of the board. You can export this file from the board’s CAD file.
4 – SPECIAL NOTES
The technical documentation must include, if any, special assembly notes in a separate text or PDF file.
In summary, our technical office must receive:
| OPTIMIZED DOC. | STANDARD DOC. | ||
| 1 – CAD FILE | ODB++ | CENTERING FILE, GERBER, CAD FILE | |
| 2 – BOM | BOM EXAMPLE | BOM, DESCRIPTION ON HOW TO USE THE BOM | |
| 3 – ASSEMBLY DRAWING | ASSEMBLY DRAWING | ASSEMBLY DRAWING | |
| 4 – SPECIAL NOTES | ASSEMBLY NOTES | ASSEMBLY NOTES |
