The Metal Price does not Impact the PCB Price

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Recently, the price for precious metal continued to fall. The market thought if this would impact the big plants who purchasing the large number of gold, copper and the CCL plants. According to the cost structure of PCB, however, the gold material just occupied 10% of the cost,and the copper material is less than 15%, but the Cycle time for producint PCB is very short, even within 2 weeks, so the factories wont purchase more for stock,even the price of gold fluct.

Printed Circuit boards can cost from 50 cents to $500 to produce. There are several factors a manufacturer considers in determining PCB costs.

PCB technologies involve high levels of intricacy. Depending on the design of a circuit board, its production could be more or less costly than the average PCB. If a PCB is intended for an everyday conventional item, the cost to manufacture the board itself should be significantly lower than the price of a board designed for high-tech machinery.

That means for the price of PCB and PCBA, they wonot change in the short time.

What Factors will Affect PCB Cost?

Material (PCB Material Cost)

Materials used in manufacturing PCBs determine the price of PCBs. Depending on the PCBs, they have varied composite materials, potentially increasing or reducing PCB costs. Three types of Printed Circuit Boards available in the market are rigid, flexible, and rigid-flex PCBs.

As a rule of thumb, operations that involve higher frequencies require materials of a higher grade than standard FR4. As such, the materials used in a microwave PCB could be 10 times more costly than the materials used for the board in a calculator or other handheld device.

Layer

nother determining factor of board price is the number of layers involved. For obvious reasons, PCBs with three or more layers cost more to produce than boards that consist of merely two layers. The pricing issue is affected by the types of material used and the size of the board itself. Overall, thick boards with numerous layers require considerably more work to manufacture.

Size

The size of a PCB panel determines its cost. More size means more space to add components and circuits for its intended application. Larger PCBs are usually expensive since they are applicable in medium to large devices, for example, a Laptop’s PCB or an industrial machine PCB.