There are several manufacturing elements that have an impact on board cost, delivery time and manufacturability. We have taken these aspects and rated them as Standard, Advanced and Engineered. Now when you design your PCB you can anticipate potential cost-drivers, process difficulties, yield loss and delivery issues.

For example, designs that have only standard manufacturing elements require fairly limited front end engineering review, no material receipt lead time delay and can progress through fabrication with relatively little process oversight.

A PCB requiring material defined as advanced may require special order from the supplier, adding to final delivery time or more intensive process engineering support.

Additionally, if a design requires several advanced elements the project might get re-categorized as engineered. Typical processes or attributes that drive a PCB to the engineered level would include multiple lamination, drill and plating cycles; mixed surface finishes or extremely dense circuit routing.

If an attribute from the advanced or engineered category is involved in a standard PCB, then the entire PCB becomes either advanced or engineered. Combining elements from across multiple categories, or having too many engineered elements can make the PCB non-manufacturable or cost-prohibitive.