PCB Design Guidelines for China Manufacturing (DFM)
1 resources tagged with "Design Guidelines"
Design guidelines here mean the DFM (Design for Manufacturability) rules that decide whether your PCB sails through a Chinese fab or comes back with yield problems. The concrete levers are trace width and spacing, via sizing and annular ring, component-to-edge clearances, stencil aperture ratios for solder paste, and fiducial and test-point placement. Getting these right against your chosen factory's stated capability is the difference between a clean first build and a board that needs a respin.
When you hand a design to a China fab, the factory matches your Gerbers against its process minimums — push below them and you pay in yield, not a clean rejection. The common pitfall is using aggressive 3/3 mil trace/space or tiny vias that one factory handles but a cheaper one cannot, so confirm the rules against the actual line before tooling.
Wiki (1)
FAQ
What DFM rules matter most for China PCB manufacturing?
Trace width/spacing, minimum via and annular ring, component-to-edge clearance, and stencil aperture ratio drive most yield issues. Match these to the specific factory's stated capability rather than a generic spec.
Why run a DFM check before sending a board to China?
A DFM check catches features that fall below the factory's process minimums — tiny vias, tight spacing, missing fiducials — before they cause low yield or a respin. Fixing them in the design stage is far cheaper than after tooling.
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