The design phase is now over, and I enter into the Procurement phase. If I have done all the mock steps, this should be just an accounting exercise using documents already generated.
It is critical to maintain a spreadsheet to track orders, when they were placed, when they are expected to arrive, and when they actually arrive.
If no problems can be found, submit the design to the board house. DipTrace will automatically submit to Bay Area Circuits, which makes this step easy. Otherwise, export the Gerber files and the Drill list and create a single zipfile to submit.
I like Bay Area Circuits, with caveats. The quality of the boards is very good, with just the right amount of HASL (Hot Air Solder Levelling) and no bridging between fine pitched pads. However, the ordering process is not very good. Orders submitted via DipTrace are routinely ignored unless it has an attached PayPal account; without a PayPal account I will receive an acknowledgement email but the order will never actually be placed. I need to follow up with a phone call about 4 hour later, talk to Maria in Orders and confirm that the order will actually be placed. This will require a credit card number that is valid for multiple charges, as Bay Area will charge the number separately for the board and stencils (and sometimes the shipping).
I prefer the customer service with APCircuits, but the quality of the boards with HASL has been extremely poor.
Using surface mount parts requires a solder stencil, which typically costs around $80. I have had some success with $35 Klapton stencils, but the Klapton will begin eroding after less than 10 boards. Klapton is good if the board design is experimental, and only one or two boards of that particular revision will ever be made. Otherwise, stick with the stainless steel stencils.
For one-off boards, it is cheaper to order a laser-cut Klapton (plastic film) stencil from OHaraRP.com at $25.00 than a stainless steel stencil for $80.00. The Klapton stencil will survive about 25-50 applications. Stainless steel stencils will survive many hundreds (or even thousands). Be aware that the Klapton stencials are thinner and will place a smaller volume of solder on the board. OHaraRP is a one-man operation (a positive in my book!), and so far I have always received the stencil before the boards.
ToDo: Contact info for Klapton stencils.
The design phase is complete, now it is time for the procurement and staging phases.
Order the parts. This should be trivial, assuming I built my BOM properly.
Parts ordered from Digikey or Mouser usually arrive the next afternoon, so place the board order first. If I preflighted the order properly, all I need to do is log onto Digikey and place the order for the saved cart. Otherwise, this should still be a simple case of walking through the BOM and adding it to the order if the part is not in stock.
Once all the parts arrive, create the assembly kit for the boards, which includes all the parts that will be placed on the board, a paper printout of the board, a paper list of the parts and their locations on the board.
Configure the PnP machine for the job. This task is described in detail elsewhere. Print the layout on paper and tape this to a piece of PCB using double-stick tape.
Use the machine to place all the parts on the paper mock-up. This will flush out any problems with placing the parts I have chosen, and create a complete PnP assembly configuration for when the boards arrive. After building the board (excluding any through-hole parts), visually inspect the placement under the microscope.
Find something else to do for next next four or five days. Do not tweak the layout; any change will mean throwing away the boards when they arrive.