PCB Assembly Products & Services

We offer boards encompassing a very diverse range of industries and applications. We help ensure RoHS and lead free compliance and meet specifications for various industries including military, aircraft, aerospace, and medical.

Single Sided Boards are the simplest boards and can be produced very quickly. Boards of this type aren’t used very much anymore. They lack the ‘barrel’ (the plated hole) of double sided plated through hole boards. This barrel makes for a much better solder joint since the solder can flow freely around a larger area of the component leads giving a larger soldered surface area. Years ago, single sided boards were much cheaper to produce than plated through hole boards but now the difference is negligible.

Double Sided Boards are the bread and butter of the Printed Circuit market. The vast majority of boards are of this type. With solder pads on both sides of the board and the ability to have circuits running in one direction on one side and the other direction on the other side, this type of board meets the criteria of durability, solderability, and dependability for a wide range of products for a wide array of customers.

Multi-Layer Boards are used where space and circuit density are constraints. These boards are being used more and more as components and products get smaller and smaller. There can be 20 or more layers of circuitry in a multi-layer board. Of course, as the density increases, so does cost. As cost becomes an issue, a good rule of thumb is to use the fewest layers possible for the design at hand.

Flexible Circuit Boards are quite common. An example everyone is familiar with is the flexible circuit board connecting the print head to the printer in an inkjet printer.

Rigid Boards and Flexible Boards can also be combined in a single circuit board.

Exotics are boards made with materials such as Kapton or Teflon.

American Circuits offers all of these types of boards. We provide competitive pricing and rock solid delivery dates. When we make a commitment, we meet it!

American Circuits offers a complete Printed Circuit Design (PCB Designing) Service for our customers. This service is utilized by customers in several forms. Most commonly, a customer will have a schematic for their design and need the PCB laid out from that schematic. Our service is fast and professional. We work closely with you, the customer, to get all the information we need to lay out your board properly.

For customers who may have an old bare board laying around, but don’t have the engineering files needed to reproduce it, ACI can also use an existing printed circuit board to create your design. We use a calibrated scanner capable of scanning bare boards directly into layout software. This process has the capability of scanning circuits under dark Solder Mask, even black, so Solder Mask is not a problem. This procedure is also used during our Reverse Engineering Service.

We can even make your circuit directly from a breadboard. Especially on prototypes, sometimes this is the most cost effective way to produce your product.

No matter which design service your particular project requires, we will be there for you throughout the process. We’re not happy until you’re happy.

American Circuits Assembly Service includes Surface Mount Board assembly, Thru-Hole Board assembly, and Mixed Technology (both Surface Mount and Thru-Hole on the same board) assembly. We can procure the parts for you or work from a supplied kit.

We offer completely automated assembly services for SMT (Surface Mount Technology) boards. An ACI staff member checks each part for size, value, and part number, then State of the art equipment visually inspects each component prior to placing it exactly where it belongs on the board. Final inspection after soldering insures a quality product, every time.

Thru-Hole boards are kitted first, to ensure all components are the proper size, value, and part number. Leads are formed to the correct length and lead spacing. Components are inserted into the circuit board. A final part count and inspections both before and after soldering are used to insure your boards are manufactured the way you designed them.

For Mixed Technology Boards, SMT assembly is performed first, followed by Thru-Hole Assembly.

American Circuits offers Quality Assemblies, Delivered On Time.

Another service we offer at American Circuits is Printed Circuit Board Reverse Engineering. We can take your sample, including components, and completely reverse engineer it. We create all the data you need to make duplicates. We can even reverse engineer boards that include programmed IC’s, custom parts, and obsolete parts.

To begin, we identify every component on the board. We then create a rough bill of material for the project. The board is completely and carefully photographed. A photocopy of the board is blown up and mounted. Each component is removed and glued to its location on the photocopy. The bill of material is refined as values are measured for resistors and capacitors. When the bill of material is completed, parts are procured, the board is scanned on a calibrated scanner in order to recreate the trace pattern, and the new bare boards are created. A sample completed assembly is sent to the customer to insure proper function prior to completing the project. This becomes a ‘golden board’ from which all others are duplicated.

American Circuits manufactures custom electronic cable assemblies and wire harnesses for a variety of applications including military, aerospace, medical, data, networking, telecommunications, consumer electronics, and automotive. We can accommodate requests from a single or first article to large scale production.

Cable harnesses can be very complex with specific geometric and electrical requirements. We can produce harnesses that meet very specific size and amperage needs as well as conform to various temperature, vibration, abrasion, and moisture tolerances.

In addition to harness assembly we can provide other wire processing services including straightening, cutting, stripping, crimping, and terminating.

A Printed Circuit Board is just a piece of fiberglass with parts on it until it connects to the outside world. We offer complete Electro-Mechanical assembly services including board mounting, wire harness mounting, enclosures, pneumatics, hydraulics, actuators, sensors, switches, lights, even optics. Just about anything you could need, we can do in house.

We also do potting, custom enclosures, custom heat sinks, and even machining. Give us a call.

So, you bought all this fancy assembly equipment and hired all these people to assemble your boards. The only problem is: you’re waiting on parts. Let us take that headache away. American Circuits has been in the procurement business for 19 years. We have the contacts and the pricing history to kit your job for you, and do it at a very reasonable cost.

Our buyers purchase worldwide, often at VERY great savings. This worldwide purchasing power also means we have access to inventories that many do not.

A good price isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t come with a quality product. We check each part for size, value, and part number. Our counts are accurate. Our labels clear. AND, we double check our work. All to insure a fully complete and high quality kit for our customers.

Contact us for a kitting quote, you won’t be sorry (and your headache will be gone!)

American Circuits offers two types of testing service. First is bare board electrical testing. We test bare boards for opens or shorts using every pad on the board. This is especially important for complex boards with fine lines and for Multi-Layer boards. Even the best human inspector can miss a microscopic short or open in a complex board. A testing machine tests every segment of every trace, 100%. The inner layers of a Multi-Layer board can only be visually inspected prior to the lay-up of the board. Once they are encapsulated in fiberglass, they can only be inspected by machine. American Circuits electrically tests 100% of Multi-Layer boards prior to shipping, to insure you receive a quality product.

The second type of testing we offer is finished assembly testing. We use a test fixture to perform actual functional testing of the board, after the component assembly has been completed. Whatever your requirements, including initial setup of pots, whatever your requirements. You can supply us with a test fixture, testing instructions, and pass/fail criteria. Or, we can build a fixture for you using your test requirements. We will go as far as necessary to provide you a quality product you’re happy with.