What is Turnkey PCB Assembly?

Turnkey PCB (printed circuit board) assembly is a comprehensive service where a manufacturer handles the entire process of designing, fabricating, sourcing components, and assembling a PCB for their client. The client simply provides their requirements and specifications, and receives a fully functional, ready-to-use PCB assembly in return.

Turnkey PCB services are especially beneficial for entrepreneurs, startups, and small to medium-sized businesses who may not have the in-house expertise, equipment, or bandwidth to handle PCB design and manufacturing themselves. By outsourcing to a turnkey provider, they can bring their electronic product ideas to market faster and more cost-effectively.

The Turnkey PCB Assembly Process

A typical turnkey PCB assembly project involves the following steps:

1. Design: The client provides their PCB requirements, component specifications, and any reference designs. The turnkey service provider’s engineering team then creates or finalizes the schematic design and PCB layout.

2. Prototyping (optional): For new designs, the manufacturer may fabricate prototype boards for testing and validation before mass production. Prototypes help verify the PCB functionality, component fit, and identify any design issues early.

3. PCB Fabrication: Once the design is finalized and approved, the PCB is fabricated. This involves printing the copper circuit pattern, laminating the substrate layers, drilling, plating, etching, applying solder mask and silkscreen, and ultimately cutting the panel into individual boards.

4. Component Sourcing: The BOM (bill of materials) is reviewed and components are procured. The turnkey vendor takes responsibility for purchasing all the components, managing the supply chain, and handling any obsolescence or lead time issues.

5. PCB Assembly: The bare PCBs are populated with components using pick-and-place machines for SMT parts and manual soldering for through-hole components. Different soldering techniques may be used like wave soldering, reflow ovens, or selective soldering depending on the PCB type. The assembled boards then go through inspection and testing.

6. Final Testing and Inspection: The PCBA undergoes further testing like in-circuit testing (ICT), flying probe tests, functional testing, and burn-in tests as required to ensure quality and functionality per the client’s specifications. Any issues found are debugged and reworked.

7. Packaging and Shipping: The finished PCB assemblies are packaged per the client’s packaging requirements and shipped to their specified destination fully ready for integration or distribution.

Turnkey PCB Assembly vs Consignment

Turnkey PCB assembly is often compared to consignment assembly. In consignment, the client sources and supplies all the components to the PCB assembly vendor, who then only handles the assembly process.

Turnkey is generally better suited for those clients who prefer the manufacturer to handle the complete process end-to-end, while consignment works well for those who want more control over their component supply chain and have established supplier relationships.

Advantages of Turnkey PCB Assembly for Entrepreneurs

1. Accelerated Time-to-Market

One of the biggest advantages of turnkey PCB assembly for entrepreneurs is faster time-to-market for their electronic products. By outsourcing the entire PCB design and manufacturing process to an experienced turnkey house, startups can drastically cut down their product development cycle.

Trying to handle PCB design, prototyping, and assembly in-house can take several months, especially for complex multilayer designs. There are a lot of moving parts like design revisions, component sourcing, generating Gerber and drill files, debugging and reworking that all add up in terms of time.

Turnkey manufacturers have streamlined processes, an expert engineering team, industry standard equipment and well-established supply chains that allow them to complete a PCBA project in a matter of weeks. Some even offer 24 hour turnaround on simple prototype designs.

For an entrepreneur looking to quickly launch their product or meet a tight deadline, this acceleration can make all the difference. It allows them to rapidly iterate on their designs, get to market faster than competitors, and start generating revenue sooner.

How much time can you save with Turnkey PCB Assembly?

Process Step	In-House	Turnkey
Design and Layout	2-4 weeks	3-5 days
Prototyping	2-3 weeks	1-2 weeks
Fabrication	3-4 weeks	1-2 weeks
Component Sourcing	4-6 weeks	–
Assembly	1-2 weeks	3-5 days
Testing & Inspection	1 week	2-3 days
Total	3-4 months	3-6 weeks

Note: These are ballpark estimates. Actual turnaround times can vary based on design complexity, component availability, and manufacturer capabilities.

2. Cost Savings

Another compelling reason for entrepreneurs to use turnkey PCB assembly is the potential for cost savings. Getting a new electronic hardware product off the ground is an expensive endeavor. There are a lot of cost elements involved like:

• Engineering and design costs
• Components and raw materials
• Manufacturing equipment and tooling
• Production labor costs
• Testing and quality control
• Certifications and compliance
• Packaging and shipping

Trying to bootstrap all of this in-house can lead to significant capital expenses and overheads for a startup. Outsourcing to a turnkey assembly house helps convert a lot of these into variable costs tied to actual production volume.

PCB design – Turnkey manufacturers have experienced PCB designers and layout engineers who can optimize your design for cost, function and manufacturability. Getting your PCB layout right the first time can avoid expensive revisions later.

Component Sourcing – Established turnkey PCB vendors have strong relationships with component distributors and can source parts at cheaper prices due to volume discounts which they pass on to their clients. They also have extensive cross-reference parts libraries to quickly suggest alternative replacements for hard-to-find or obsolete components.

Fabrication – Producing PCBs requires investing in equipment for printing, drilling, laminating, plating, etching and finishing bare boards. Turnkey PCB vendors already have this production infrastructure in place, and often in-house. This eliminates the need for capital expenditure for entrepreneurs.

Assembly – Setting up an electronics assembly line involves investing in several expensive machines like pick-and-place, solder paste printer, reflow ovens, wave soldering, AOI, and test fixtures. Then there’s the skilled labor needed to operate them. With turnkey, you tap into the vendor’s existing assembly capabilities without the upfront investment.

Testing & QC – Thorough PCBA Testing and inspection requires sophisticated equipment like flying probe testers, ICT machines, x-ray inspection, and functional testers. Turnkey vendors already have this equipment so you don’t need to invest in it yourself. Their expertise also helps catch design issues and defects before final production.

Example Cost Savings with Turnkey PCB Assembly

Let’s consider an example IoT device startup looking to get their first product manufactured. Assuming a mid-complexity board design, 1000 unit production run, and quotes from a turnkey vendor vs estimated in-house costs:

Cost Element	In-House Estimate	Turnkey Quote
Design and Layout	$15,000	$5,000
Component Sourcing	$20,000	$15,000
PCB Fabrication	$12,000	$8,000
Assembly	$25,000	$10,000
Testing & QC	$10,000	$5,000
Shipping	$3,000	$2,000
Total	$85,000	$45,000

By going with a turnkey vendor, the startup could save nearly 50% on their PCBA costs, freeing up $40,000 in capital that can be invested in other areas of the business.

*Note: These are hypothetical numbers for illustration. Actual costs can vary significantly based on design complexity, components used, production volume and manufa