Three EMS companies show why additive manufacturing isn’t just the provenance of the fab shop.

The printed circuit board industry isn’t historically known for sudden innovation and change, but 3-D printing technology has been successfully adopted by many along the PCB supply chain. While there are those in the industry pushing for adoption of full 3-D printed circuit boards, capability and demand remain extremely niche. On the other hand, demand is quietly growing on the PCB assembly side for 3-D printing of fixtures for solder application, assembly and testing.

Three PCB assembly operations I recently visited are using 3-D printers to solve manufacturing and testing issues. The ability to quickly build a test fixture, assembly fixture or even custom shielding components for conformal coating means these facilities can deliver assembled boards with custom solutions traditionally reserved for high-volume production. This results in faster time to market because the assemblers are no longer waiting for a third party to fabricate a molded plastic or piece of metal for their application. In many cases, the metal material and fabrication costs aren’t economical, but a resin 3-D printed solution is, bringing up potential solutions that were previously easily dismissed.

Updating industry software involves much more than a simple button press.

Software updates and engineering process changes are hidden roadblocks for industry adoption of modern data exchange formats like Gerber X3, ODB++ and IPC-2581. Akin to the iceberg lurking under the surface, significant issues are holding back the industry from wider adoption. And it raises the question of whether these formats meet the needs of the designer without addressing the needs of the factory.

While intelligent formats offer improved digitization and control of data flow from designer to fabricator and assembler, their benefits haven’t been positioned in a way that will entirely win over the manufacturing side. It is a pain to manage all the different separate Gerber, drill, BoM and placement files, however, so I look forward to a resolution.