Panel Utilization
Revision 1, July 2001
The production panel materials cover a considerable part of a printed circuit board cost price, it is therefore important, when designing a printed circuit board, to try to achieve the best possible utilization of the panel sizes available.
Panel Size and Usable Area
Chemitalic uses three panel sizes: 453 x 560 mm (18” x 22”), 453 x 590 mm (18” x 24”) and 528 x 590 mm (21” x 24”), see FIG 1.
Circuit boards or customer panels can be placed in the Usable Area. The panel border material, reducing height by 2 x 17 mm and width by 2 x 15 mm, is used for production purposes and cannot be used by the customer.
As a standard, circuit boards and customer panels must be placed with a spacing of 10 mm in all directions when the circuit boards are routed from the panel. Special arrangements can be made with our sales department to reduce the spacing to 5 mm. If the circuit boards are separated by means of scoring, in which case v-shaped tracks are cut into the laminate from both sides, the spacing can be further reduced; but again, only at special agreement.
If test coupons are to be delivered to the customer, these will be a part of the Usable Area.
Limitations: Maximum panel size when carbon paste print has been specified: 453 x 590 mm. Maximum panel size when galvanic nickel/gold has been specified: 453 x 560 mm, plated area is maximum 400 x 560 mm.
Design for manufacturability provides the best posible utilization of the panels, see example FIG 2 A og B.
In the example shown in FIG 2A, the circuit board utilizes 59 percent of the Usable Area with the width measurement of 500 mm, 41 percent is waste; this increases the circuit board price and also the invironmental impact.
FIG 2 B shows how a re-design of the circuit board has reduced the width to 423 mm resulting in a 98 percent utilization of the Usable Area with only 2 percent waste.
Shown below is the maximum board size based on different layouts on the three panel sizes:
NOTE: The layouts shown apply when the circuit boards are routed from the panels.
