When making printed circuit boards (PCBs), individual boards are first combined into a big panel board. After components mounting or soldering, they are separated into individual boards using de-paneling tools.
This article summarizes the three most common PCB de-paneling methods used in the industry today:
Do you ever find yourself being less than honest when writing an 8D report to a customer? Or maybe in your company, the 8D report is more like a “one-man show”? What should we really pay attention to when writing an 8D report?
Here, Workingbear wants to share some personal thoughts about the 8D report. To be clear, Workingbear isn’t exactly a quality management expert — just someone who has spent years in the field, taken some basic quality-related training, written a few 8D reports, and reviewed plenty from suppliers. These experiences brought some insights worth sharing. Of course, if you have different opinions or questions, feel free to bring them up for discussion.
Thinking back to my first day working at an electronics assembly factory, I was hired as a Product Engineer. This role is actually quite similar to that of a Process Engineer, but at that time, Workingbear only had experience in IC packaging or Semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) company — so when it came to assembly line operations, I was totally clueless.
In most PCB (Printed Circuit Board) designs, panels are usually connected using V-cuts or tabs/ribs, and then separated with a V-cut scoring machine or a router de-panel machine. However, besides these two common connection methods, there’s another approach called the stamp hole design. Workingbear personally isn’t a big fan of this method, which is why it hasn’t been covered until now.
The name “stamp hole” comes from its resemblance to a sheet of postage stamps — small holes are drilled along the break line, allowing the boards to be snapped apart by hand or with pliers. This design makes manual de-paneling easy and doesn’t require special equipment, unlike the other two methods that need a scoring or routing machine.
An engineer must be grounded, hands-on, and unafraid to get their hands dirty — learning by doing and using practical experience to verify theory.
Because of his job, Workingbear often visits various professional electronics manufacturing service (EMS) factories and spends a lot of time on production floors. He frequently interacts with process engineers and test engineers. To these engineers, Workingbear always emphasizes two things:
1. Do it yourself.
2. Always ask “why.”
