Printed circuit boards, or PCBs, are vital components of multiple electronic and electrical products. These components connect various elements, and they function in everything from computer and DVD players to car engines and underground sensors. Moreover, printed circuit boards have been available since the second world war when governments were utilizing them exclusively for military applications. As of the 21st century, you can find these components in almost every electrical or electronic gadget that you come across.
However, this means that when you are developing an electronic gadget, you will likely require the services of a printed circuit board designer to generate your PCB layout. Moreover, you will probably need an electrical engineer to help you convert the design into a physical circuit board.
But, before you move on to the hiring stage, it is crucial to first figure out the average rates of hiring a printed circuit board designer for PCB layout services. Doing so will help you generate a reliable budget for your project. So how much does it cost to gain PBC layout services? And should you outsource the PCB layout development process or work on the project independently?
What you will need
Even though you can quickly gain a rough estimation of how much it will cost you to hire a printed circuit board designer, for you to gain an official PCB layout quote, you’ll have to provide sufficient details about your board design to the circuit board engineer. After receiving this information, the circuit board design engineer will calculate how much it will cost you to generate the design and then provide you with an estimated price that is more accurate.
If you skip this step, your estimation may be inaccurate, leading to you going over budget.
When generating the PCB layout quote, you must provide some documents to the printed circuit board design engineer. Moreover, there are additional documents that you can also provide that, though optional, can help offer a more accurate estimation.
Here are the most common documents that you’ll have to provide:
Schematic
The schematic is, without a doubt, one of the most crucial documents you must provide to the PCB design engineer. The documents should be in a PDF or Native design format for portability.
Generally, schematics tell printed circuit board design engineers a lot about your product, including the following:
- How much effort will go into generating your circuit board layout design
- How many hours will go into creating the layout design
Moreover, this document also gives the PCB designer a rough idea of the complexity of your PCB design.
Bill of Materials
The next document is the bill of documents, commonly known as the BOM. Generally, BOMs contain a list of all the parts and materials the manufacturer will utilize to generate your printed circuit board. Typically, you can take BOM as a complex shopping list containing all the elements that you’ll need to develop your printed circuit board.
BOM documents will inform the printed circuit board designer about the components you wish to use on your PCB.
Mechanical (simple X and Y dimensions, PDF, IDF, or DXF)
The last essential document you must hand over to the PCB designer is the document containing mechanical information. The mechanical info document typically includes details about the board’s outline and dimensions.
When it comes to this document, printed circuit board designers need all the information you can share, do not leave anything behind. That is because this information will help them design the PCB so that it will be functional and still fit impeccably into the product that you will use the circuit board on. Therefore, if you mess up this document, you might get an oversized or under-size printed circuit board in return.
These are generally the most crucial files that you have to share with your PCB designer for them to generate an excellent and accurate PCB layout. However, you can still add more details to help the PCB designer get your PCB layout quote more accurately. Moreover, this additional information will be helpful during the design process.
Some optional files that you can choose to share include:
- Component datasheets
- Placement floorplan
- Constraint/routing rules
- Netfiles
What next?
With these details, your circuit board designer will clearly see how your printed circuit board is supposed to look like at the end. Hence, they should be in a position to give you a close-to-accurate estimation of how much money you’ll have to spend to produce the PCB layout.
However, if you do not have this document ready, you might have to bring in an expert early in the PCB development project. The expert should be able to study your project requirements and generate all these files for you.
Printed circuit boards are pretty complex components, and they usually pass through multiple hands before you get the finished product. Therefore, if you do not have the detail needed to generate the PCB, or you leave gaps for the engineers to fill. Then you might end up getting a printed circuit board that doesn’t function appropriately. Or you may have to pay more to get the finished product.
Other things your PCB Designer might want to know
While the documents we went through earlier are the most crucial elements when getting a PCB layout quote, other details might further help the PCB designer. Moreover, these additional details also help the designer communicate and minimize errors that might come haunting your project later on.
Generally, the PCB designer might want you to provide answers to the following questions:
- What is your estimated PCB layout generation price?
- Which date do you expect to get your finished product?
- Do you have internal component libraries?
Using this information, the designer can effectively tailor the PCB layout to your needs. Moreover, these details might also impact the PCB layout service price.
If you have any inquiries regarding the design creation process, this is the perfect time to voice your concern. By communicating your issues with our designer at this time, you can easily set up communication at an early stage which might ultimately help you out throughout the designing process.
Tips to Estimate Working Hours
Generally, most printed circuit board engineers tend to charge their fee by the hour. Therefore, by effectively calculating the hours it will take to generate your PCB layout, you can come up with an estimated layout production cost.
PCB layout completions typically include the following elements:
- Output file generation
- Routing
- Critical routing
- Placement
- Critical placement
- Library component creation
If you have a component library already, this might reduce the amount of time needed to produce your circuit board layout design. However, on the flip side, if the pin placement area is tiny, the designer might take a lot of time trying to generate a layout that will cater to these pins.
That is why generating the layout production cost is more challenging than multiplying the circuit board’s size with the hourly fee of the PCB engineer. Doing so will only help you get a rough idea of the price. However, it would help if you started with the actual base price and adjusted this cost by eliminating various add-ons.
Why do we need PCB Engineer when handling Printed Circuit Board Layout Services?
Without in-depth inspection, you might think that a PCB engineer and a CAD designer do similar work. And generally, no one can blame you for thinking this because they are both:
- Showing the circuit board layout and how the layout works
- And they are also generating the circuit board in various ways
Therefore, most people tend to skip printed circuit board engineers and then head on to a CAD PCB designer to help them complete the PCB layout.
However, printed circuit board engineers have impeccable value that can help you save much money in the PCB development life cycle. Moreover, these engineers often have impeccable knowledge of the following:
- How the circuit board actually works (in-depth)
- The manufacturing process
By combining these two, the engineers can help you generate not just your layout but also your physical board in a cost and time-effective manner.
CAD PCB designer can quickly generate a circuit board design that works per the user’s requirement. However, they might not have the knowledge to test the design and figure out whether or not it can be manufactured. That is where a PCB engineer comes to play. Moreover, the PCB engineer can make simple alterations to your design which can help you save up a lot of money in the production process.
Conclusion
Rates for PCB layout services are pretty variable. And even though most people think that they can calculate the average PCB layout production cost by multiplying the hours needed to work on the board by the hours actually utilized by the engineer to work on the board. These hours can fluctuate impeccably depending on various factors, such as the type of board you are developing. Therefore, we hope the information in this article will help you gain impeccable cost estimates to help you achieve the best PCB layout services.