What is PCB tooling charge?

Tooling charge is the charge or cost of all kinds of tools involved in PCB production, like molds, films, fixtures, and so on. With the trend that orders are getting smaller and smaller, fewer and fewer tools are used in PCB production, in order to meet the flexible requirements on order quantities and lead time. SDY has electrical test fixture charge only, which is quite competitive in total price among PCB factories. So tooling charge is equal to electrical test charge for SDY in most cases.

The electrical test fixture charge is charged to make a special electrical test tool used to perform electrical test on PCBs. It is a most common and basic kind of tooling charge. Compared with flying probe test, electrical test by fixture is quite efficient and cost effective for large quantity orders or repeat orders. SDY takes this electrical test fixture charge once only, and there would be no more electrical test charges in repeat orders. Kindly please refer to another article for more details of electrical test methods, Printed Circuit Board Electrical Testing.

The electrical test fixture has a limited shelf life and repeat using times. Such fixture is a special and unique tool suitable for only one single PCB for one single customer, so the fixtures will get more and more in quantity with the development of factory. And it takes larger and larger space to store these fixtures. Many factories have a 2 years shelf life for electrical test fixtures, in order to ensure the quality of fixtures and spare enough space to store new fixtures. That means, the client has to pay the fixture charge again if there is no order for this PCB after 2 years. SDY is quite flexible on this shelf life policy, and SDY even offers free electrical test fixture for larger quantity orders.

Mold charge is another kind of tooling charge. In some rare cases, it requires a punching mold to make the outline and slots of PCBs. It is used in some PCBs with complex, non-standard outline, or with too many slots inside boards, or with too small size, or with too small tolerance on dimensions. With the efficiency and precision improvement of CNC routing machines, more and more PCBs are made by CNC routing even they have many slots and small tolerance on dimensions. The punching mold is usually very expensive compared with the unit price of PCBs.

Films are also involved in PCB manufacture. The images on films are made from gerber data in exact size, shape and location. That is why usually gerber data is required for PCB production. Kindly please refer to article PCB gerber files for more information. And then the film images would be transferred to PCB boards, to make copper layers, solder mask, silk screen, and so on. SDY usually do not charge film cost for PCB orders.

SDY quotes reasonable price for tooling charges and proposes favorable options on tools for clients, in order to reduce the cost, improve products quality and production efficiency. Kindly please feel free to contact our engineers or Alex@sdy-pcb.com for any PCB questions or RFQs.