When you are designing and producing a product, a PCB can easily become one of the most costly components of the whole product, thus lowering the PCB cost can be one of the major factors that can be proven beneficial for lowering the overall production cost. Majorly, the PCB cost can be reduced by cutting the PCB size as well as selecting the review film proper components, and introducing proper design techniques. This is why in this article, we will describe the most common PCB cost reduction techniques which you can implement when designing and fabricating your PCB. In our previous PCB articles, we have discussed many PCB design techniques like:

Efficient Placing of Thermal Vias Improve Heat Management
Via Stitching in PCB Design
Understanding Blind, Buried, and Through-hole vias in PCB
How can Teardrops help in Improving Quality and Stability of your PCB Design
You can check those out if you are interested to learn about PCB design and manufacturing. That being said, let’s look into the tips to reduce PCB manufacturing costs.

Reducing the Size of the PCB
Reduction of PCB Size is the most common PCB cost-cutting technique that can be used to lower the PCB cost. There is another positive outcome as the reduction of PCB size also leads to the reduction in the size of the product, which is again fruitful for different kinds of applications. In previous times, through-hole components were the widely available components that directly affected the size of the PCB.

Today, all components can be converted to SMD versions, even ICs, as different manufacturers provide different packages that are smaller in size that could be useful to directly reduce the PCB size. See the below images to understand how component sizes reduce the board dramatically.