PCB Assembly Project For Electronic Scale

The customer is a family business, and today’s managers have cleaned up many inappropriate suppliers after taking over the company from his father. The electronic scale is one of their products, but the price given by one of their PCBA suppliers is very unreasonable. This manager found us through Alibaba. But unfortunately, they have been working together for a long time, so the original PCBA Gerber and Bom data used by the electronic scales has not been managed by the manager, and the old suppliers do not need to hand over the data. So he took the samples to us, hoping that we could help him solve this problem. Our cooperation starts with this reverse engineering service for electronic scale PCBA.

The beginning of the PCBA project

When we received the PCBA prototype, our engineers commented that this PCB was designed many years ago and is a consumer electronics product, so the requirements are particularly ordinary. It is a two-layer PCB with green solder mask and white silkscreen. Several LED lights for indication, and one charging port. The PCB board reverse engineering went well as we expected. After confirming the details with the customer, the customer proposed some modifications, because many components are too old and need to be updated. The final picture looks like this (Now the finished product, initially slightly altered.)

Project Improvement

LED with separation column

The LED lights in the picture come straight when coming to the material, as shown below. When soldering to the PCB, it needs to be processed into a 90-degree bend on the outside of the PCB to indicate the power consumption. When the sample was produced for the first time, there was no isolation column as shown in the figure below, so the product received by the customer had the LED deformed during transportation. And because the sample sheet is welded by the worker’s hands, the height is different. After the production summary, our company proposed to add a separation column to the LED, so that not only the height of the lamp can be guaranteed to be consistent, but also the LED can be avoided from being distorted during transportation.

Packaging

After producing 10 PCBA samples for the first time, the customer said that the test had 3 failures. The voltage did not meet the requirements, and the customer sent back three defective products for repair. The reason for the bad is that the inductors are too large, and the welding was disconnected due to violent transportation. The customer initially suspected our welding was not reliable enough, we provided the AOI inspection report and the factory inspection report to the customer at the time, he was very relieved about our rigor.

After the repair, we provide a simple test and send it to the customer. The second batch of 100 products passed the test. In order to prevent violent transportation, we have thickened the packaging for our customers, and they are very happy to receive a complete set of 100 new products.

Expand the pad

Because the old model is easy to break, the customer added another 100 units in the 4th month. The customer was a little bit distressed, and they told us that the old electronic scales were getting rid of faster because the contact was not so sensitive. After consultation, our engineer made a slight modification to the customer’s PCB, as shown by the arrow in the figure below. The original product pads were not so large, which caused customers to be prone to poor contact after a long period of use. We propose to expand the pad to increase the contact area, and lead-free tin can be changed to heavy gold. But due to the limited customer’s budget and the not high market positioning of the product, he only accepted the proposal to expand the pad. The entire product is now much more stable.

Function Test

This back and forth shipment delays the progress of production, the original customer did not know that we can also provide testing. After the video conference, we learned the test method. The multimeter was adjusted to the buzzer level to test the two pad points.

Customer Evaluation

The customer said, “The previous supplier hoped the higher the elimination rate then to produce more, but 86PCB help to think about the problem from the perspective of the customer, help us save cost and improve the product quality. I will transfer more order to you. “We are now discussing the design of a gravity sensing product. With the product of electronic scales, the cooperation between the two parties will be more smooth in the future.”

Our Advantages

We have many years of working experience in the PCB and PCBA industries. After continuous improvement, we now have a complete management and production inspection system.

We use ERP system from the entry of all data to the material access management, real-time updates until inspection. Purchasing personnel establish a comprehensive evaluation system for suppliers creditworthiness, performance, after-sales service capabilities and material market price conditions and trends according to the company’s necessary. Professional testing equipment, clear intellectual property management policy and goals and resolutely implements quality management system standards.