Shipping Your Printed Circuit Board
If your team has started putting together custom printed circuit boards that need to go out to clients separately, you may need to rethink the way you ship them. Each printed circuit board (PCB) can be scratched, chipped, or otherwise damaged in a shipment, which could rack up costs for your business. If you've been shipping your boards in simple tissue paper up until now, you should check out these other tips so the boards reach their destination without any damaging problems.
Mark Boxes Properly
The first, and easiest thing to do to ensure board integrity during shipment is to mark shipping boxes properly. Delivery drivers, mail carriers, and other people who handle the boxes throughout its process can handle boxes in such a way that they're jostled around a lot. That could lead to chips, dents, or other damages to your circuit boards. However, if you mark boxes "FRAGILE," mail carriers and delivery drivers will be more tender-handed with them. To be sure that people notice how fragile your boxed materials are, you might even use special labels and packing tape that clearly explains care must be taken with them.
Use Appropriate Bags
Electrostatic discharge (ESD) can damage transistors and other metal components of your circuit boards. For that reason, it's important to protect the boards with ESD or anti-static bags, which stop static charges from building up and causing potential future trouble. These bags usually have a plastic seal at the top, just like sandwich bags do.
Use Desiccant
In addition to electrostatic discharge, moisture is another major challenge to the integrity of your boards. Moisture is never good for metal elements of your circuit boards, nor is it good for the board itself. Even if you pack your boards well, the moisture in the air could still be a threat at different points along the shipping route.
To reduce the moisture that your boards are exposed to, there could be a relatively simple fix. Desiccants work to absorb any moisture lingering in the air so that your boards remain undamaged during shipments. Packets of silica gel are commonly used for this purpose.
If your team can keep your printed circuit boards safe and intact while sending them off to various clients, you can work on getting more boards into people's hands. Consider partnering with a PCB shipping service to keep boards in fantastic condition no matter where in the world you send them.
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