The capability extract shows in thirty seconds what runs as standard and what carries a surcharge.
See capabilities →Send the files and an engineer reviews them against your build — free, before you enquire.
To the data check →The industry rule of thumb is that 70 to 80 per cent of what a board costs to build is fixed in the layout and the stack-up — long before anyone asks for a quotation. By the time the enquiry goes out, the room to negotiate is correspondingly small. The drivers below are the ones worth spending an hour on while there is still an hour to spend.
The drivers on the board are properties of the product: how much material it consumes, how many process steps it needs, how many of them it survives. They appear on the quotation, and they are the ones everybody optimises. The drivers beside it appear on no quotation: when the specification is frozen, the class, the material, the lot size. They set the price just as firmly — only earlier, and somewhere else.
Everything here is a direct consequence of a decision in the layout or the stack-up. The effect column is the size of the lever, not a discount — a driver marked high can move the price by a multiple, not by a percentage.
| Driver | What it does | Your lever | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Board size and panel utilisation | The panel is what is bought, not the board. Poor utilisation means paying for laminate that is scrapped. | Adjust the outline by a few millimetres before it is frozen — we check the panel fit and report the potential. | high |
| Layer count | Each pair of layers adds material, a lamination cycle and inspection. | Route denser on fewer layers, or accept HDI where it removes two layers rather than adding a step. | high |
| Structure class | Track and gap below the standard values move the board into the advanced process with a lower yield. | Hold 100 / 100 µm at 35 µm copper where the routing allows it; drop below only where it is needed. | notable |
| Copper weight | Heavier foil costs more, etches wider and forces larger track and gap minimums. | Use heavy copper on the layers that carry current, not across the whole build. | notable |
| Via technology | Laser drilling, sequential lamination, filling and capping are each an additional pass. | Staggered instead of stacked; filled only where via-in-pad or heat dissipation requires it. | high |
| Surface finish | ENIG and hard gold cost several times what HASL costs, and are unavoidable on fine pitch. | Choose the finish for the finest pitch on the board, not for the whole board at once. | notable |
| Material and tolerances | High-Tg, halogen-free, polyimide and low-loss materials all carry a premium, as do tightened tolerances. | Specify the material for the solder cycles and temperature actually required, not for the worst case imaginable. | notable |
Effect is the size of the lever on a typical series board, not a quotation figure. On any specific build the ranking can move — ask and we will tell you which driver is binding on yours.
Four decisions that never appear as a line item and set the unit price for the life of the board anyway. All four are taken before the first enquiry goes out.
A change after tooling means new tooling. The same change three weeks earlier costs nothing at all. This is the single largest avoidable cost in most projects.
IPC-A-600 Class 3 on a board that needs Class 2 raises the price permanently — it affects build-up, annular rings and test scope, not just acceptance. Specify Class 3 where the application earns it and Class 2 where it does not.
A build fixed to one laminate from one supplier removes every alternative when that laminate is on allocation. Naming an equivalent in the specification costs nothing and is worth a great deal in a tight market.
Setup is a fixed cost spread across the lot. Frequent small orders pay it every time; a framework with call-offs pays it once and buffers the rest from stock.
Send the intended build and the outline. We check panel utilisation and tell you which driver is binding on this board — the answer is often a few millimetres rather than a layer.