Project Overview
Turnkey PCBA manufacturing for an industrial automation equipment manufacturer supplying factory automation and machinery. The build is a motor-control and inverter control board used as the control centre of the machine. Kilandu sourced the components, assembled and tested the board, and supplied it from prototype through pilot into repeat production.
Customer Requirement
- Mixed SMT and through-hole assembly on one substrate
- Motor-control and inverter control logic
- Both in-circuit test and functional test, not one or the other
- Operation across an industrial temperature range
- Repeat-order consistency with full traceability
Engineering Challenges
The board mixes through-hole and SMT content on a single substrate, which constrains both the assembly sequence and the inspection coverage. Because the board sits at the heart of the customer's machine, a parameter drift would not show up at delivery — it would surface as field failures months later. That made test design the central requirement rather than an afterthought: component-level integrity had to be verified in-circuit, and system-level control functions had to be verified functionally, from the same board, before it left the line.
Manufacturing Solution
Kilandu performed a DFM review of layout, BOM and assembly files before production. Components were sourced build-to-print, with long-lead items flagged at quotation. The board was assembled on our SMT lines with in-line SPI and AOI, and through-hole parts were assembled on our DIP lines. In-process inspection included SPI, AOI and X-ray on selected builds.
Electrical testing combined ICT for component-level integrity with a customer-approved FCT for system-level control functions. Repeat orders ran against the same approved BOM, process parameters and test limits, and each lot shipped with per-lot traceability.
Build and Capability Data
| Parameter | Specification |
|---|---|
| Assembly | Mixed SMT + DIP |
| In-process inspection | SPI + AOI + X-ray |
| Electrical test | ICT (component-level integrity) + FCT (system-level control functions) |
| Traceability | Per-lot inspection and process records |
| Quality system | ISO 9001:2015 (CN27125Q0392R0S) |
| Lead time | Prototype 5–8 working days · volume production 2–5 weeks · repeat order 2–3 weeks |
| Layer count, board size, BOM count, production volume | Available under NDA on request |
Result
First article was approved before the volume run was released, and the board entered repeat production with consistent quality across batches. Because ICT and FCT were both part of the released route rather than added per order, faults were caught at the stage where they are still cheap to correct — on the line, not in the customer's machine.
What This Demonstrates
Industrial control PCBA · motor control and inverter PCBA · ICT + FCT · repeat-order consistency.
Why does this build use both ICT and FCT?
ICT verifies component-level integrity and FCT verifies system-level control functions. On a board that sits at the heart of the customer's machine, a parameter drift would not show up at delivery but as field failures months later, so both levels are run on the same board before it leaves the line.
What does repeat-order consistency mean here in practice?
Repeat orders run against the same approved BOM, the same process parameters and the same test limits as the qualified first article. That is what stops a batch from being quietly re-tuned per order and drifting away from the sample that was signed off.
What was mixed about this assembly?
The board mixes through-hole and SMT content on a single substrate, which constrains both the assembly sequence and the inspection coverage, and is why SPI, AOI and X-ray are specified across the route with X-ray on selected builds.