PCB Design ≠ PCB Manufacturing
In the electronics industry, the quality and reliability of products depend primarily on the manufacturer’s process capabilities. The PCB factory is not a black box production line. It’s not that you give them the relevant PCB design data, and you can get a finished product that is precisely the same as the PCB design after a few days.
PCB design is a complete and rigorous process system, and PCB manufacturing is another set of sophisticated production and processing systems. At the same time, PCB design data is not equivalent to PCB manufacturing data. In other words, PCB manufacturing does not directly use PCB design data. PCB design data needs to be converted into production data for machines through CAM (Computer-Aided Manufacturing).
CAM conversion
PCB Designers Need to Understand the PCB Manufacturing Process
Suppose the PCB designer does not understand the PCB manufacturing process and the CAM data conversion process, or the CAM engineer does not understand the relevant terminology of PCB design. In these cases, there will be problems in the data conversion from PCB design to PCB manufacturing.
Especially for “low-level” format files, like Gerber, that describe a single image, you also need an additional description file to describe your PCB manufacturing requirements, such as impedance control, layered structure, surface finish, and so on.
The information used for PCB manufacturing can be placed in an additional Gerber file, or it can be placed in a document file like Word for description in graphic form. However, where there is a text description, there will be problems with expressing and understanding the information; it is necessary to use telephone, email, or other communication tools to communicate and confirm. Suppose both parties use their professional terms to describe the problem and cannot clearly understand it. In that case, they all think that the other party does not know everything, and low-efficiency or even wrong communication is often the culprit for PCB manufacturing failures.
Dialogue between Layout and CAM