Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are an essential component of almost every electrical and electronic product sold today. PCB manufacturing is a complex process involving many chemical, therrnal, and mechanical steps. Like other manufacturing industries, PCB manufacturers seek to optimize each of these steps to achieve the highest quality and the best yield. Many of the key PCB manufacturing steps require tooling which is unique for each PCB design produced. The quality of this custom tooling has a large effect on the yield and quality of the final product.The complex fine line patterns which the tooling must accurately portray are contained in a design database. Creation of custom tooling from the design database is currently a manual process performed by a human expert. Researchers are developing a tooling generator that would produce PCB custom tooling from a design database without human intervention. Such a product would allow PCB manufacturers to convert a critical step from an uncontrolled manual procedure into a deterministic, measurable process. Proven techniques such as Statistical Process Control and continuous improvement could then be applied to the custom tooling portion of the PCB manufacturing process.Commercial Applications:An automatic tooling generator would bring a crucial portion of the PCB manufacturing process under process control. Manufacturers who adopted such a product would increase competitiveness and lower costs through optimized yields, higher quality, and shorter turnaround times.
