Design for Manufacturing (DFM) : The Secret Formula To Manufacturability

The best concept, design, or innovative product will remain a dream and won’t reach the marketplace if it can’t be manufactured. That’s the difference between design and design for manufacturing.

What is DFM?

“Design for manufacturing (DFM) is the secret formula to make everything as easy and streamlined as possible for the manufacturer,” says Isaias Solis-Valencia, Manufacturing Engineer at Aurora Boardworks. It takes a special body of knowledge and experience to recognize when and where changes to a design could improve manufacturability.

Today’s technology and industrial expertise tends to be compartmentalized and specialized. With the wide range of PCB manufacturing methods available, it’s unrealistic to expect a design engineer to be aware of all the nuances of working with every possible type of equipment that could be used to manufacture a particular board.

So while an expert design engineer can create a top performing and fully functional design for a product or circuit board, without specific manufacturing experience, that same engineer may not have the insights to maximize the product’s manufacturability.

 

How is DFM applied?

Optimizing manufacturability means streamlining the process, ensuring quality production, and following design standards and best practices. When you can fix a design flaw, even by a simple modification, you prevent a major portion of manufacturing issues from arising. What’s more, you create the possibility for savings as a result of greater efficiencies and reduction in time and labor costs.

The design for manufacturing process involves thinking ahead and it takes into consideration many different aspects of board design including:

• Component placement, tolerances, and clearances
• Signal integrity requirements
• Heat management
• Tracing widths, spacing, material
• Surface finish and coatings

“DFM is especially helpful if you are starting a brand new product,” says Daniel Stanphill, SMT Process Engineer at Aurora Boardworks. “You have a price range in mind that makes sense for what you can expect a customer to pay for your product. You can design a circuit on paper that works perfectly, but it could have potentially unnecessary complexity and challenges that add to the cost of production.”

To sum up the whole process, Stanphill says, “as a contract manufacturer, our goal is to streamline or simplify the design or just assist in a way that improves manufacturability so that we can help customers reach a more attractive price point that might help them get their product to market.”

What are some possible design changes?

The types of changes that might be recommended as part of design for manufacturing could be fundamental, such as:

Panelization <p>Boards can be grouped on a single panel that is later divided up into individual boards, instead of creating small individual boards that might require a special universal carrier or custom jigs to facilitate the manufacturing process.<p>

 

Updating the design <p>Switching to surface mount methods instead of through-hole design can reduce time and cost.  Whenever machine operations can replace hand operations, the result is typically substantial savings in both labor and time.<p>

 

Changing the finish <p>Board finishes can have an impact on quality and performance within the manufacturing process. A glossy vs a matte finish, for example, can change the difficulty in the selective soldering.<p>

 

What is the DFM process at Aurora Boardworks?

The process all starts with a review of the Gerber files by the engineering team. They discuss recommendations first, then talk to the customer’s engineering team to offer suggestions that could simplify the manufacturing process.

These recommendations could be easy fixes or could dive into the details of a particular process or style of board design. For example, the discussion could involve different strategies related to solder masks and pads, and whether the pads are defined by the copper or by the solder masks that go over it, and how that could impact the process.

Collaboration and open communication are the keys to success for the DFM process, a natural outgrowth of the strong and deep relationships Aurora Boardworks has with their customers.

Documentation wraps up the process so that customers have an accurate record of every element and stage. It’s not unusual for the A-Team to be updating documentation that they created years ago for the customer because so many customer relationships go back many years.

Technology is advancing so rapidly, including manufacturing technology and methods used for producing PCBAs, it’s hard to keep up on every front. Understandably, different engineering disciplines tend to stay in their own lanes.

Even more reason to work with a custom PCB manufacturer that has seen and done just about everything over the years. Tap into that deep body of knowledge and work with a collaborative team that knows how to enable your design to be produced both accurately and efficiently so you can keep your eye on your own core objectives.

The A-Team is ready to help; give us a call to get the conversation started.