Hi,

I have been asked to do a presentation on scoring to my fellow PCB
designers. I have been though the Technet archives and obtained a lot of
very useful information.

However I have some questions.

Could anyone explain the cost savings of scoring. I understand the panel
utilisation issues but would this not be offset to some extent by the
following?

1a. Surely all PCBs must go though a routing stage, as the array is routed
out of the board vendor's panel. Does scoring not add an additional
process to the board fabrication?

1b. Also the scoring process can only be done 1 up, whereas routing
can be done 2 or 3 up. Am I correct in assuming this?

1c. Do some PCB manufacturers use their CNC router as the scoring
machine?

Also:

2. Can the scoring lines be run non perpendicularly to the edges of the
array? eg. produce a trapezoidal shape?

3. Would you agree that there are less stresses applied to SMD
components when mechanical depanelisation is used on a scored array
(Pizza cutter), than when an array with routed tabs is manually broken
out.

4. I have also heard of a process that just uses a pointer to score the
array. Can anyone verify this?

Regards,

Steve Kingdon
PCB Designer
Tait Electronics Ltd
[log in to unmask]

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