Mining
Boards that keep working underground, through vibration, dust ingress and temperature swing.
Central Electronic Technologies · Midrand, South Africa
Boards built to
be measured
Printed circuit board manufacture and assembly for mining, medical, defence, security, automotive and railway electronics. Built in Gauteng, so your schedule is counted in days rather than in shipping weeks and customs clearance.
Unit 3 Rambo Junction400 Roan CrescentCorporate Park NorthMidrand
A circuit board is a promise about what happens in three years, not what happens on the bench.
Central Electronic Technologies manufactures and assembles printed circuit boards in Midrand. They go into equipment running underground, in hospitals, on rolling stock and in vehicles — places where an intermittent joint is found by a customer rather than by a test rig.
That shapes how the work is done. Consistency between a first article and a board built two years later matters more than a marginal saving on unit price, and reaching the engineer who built it matters more than either.
Bare boards and populated assemblies, from one supplier
Keeping fabrication and assembly under one roof removes the handover between fabricator and assembler — the point where responsibility usually goes missing when a board fails on test.
PCB Manufacturing
Bare board fabrication from your Gerber or ODB++ output, built and inspected in Midrand.
Single-sided through to multilayer construction, manufactured locally so the schedule is measured in days rather than in shipping weeks and customs clearance.
PCB Assembly
Populated boards — surface mount, through-hole, and mixed technology.
Bare board and assembly under one supplier removes the handover where responsibility usually goes missing when a board fails on test.
Prototype PCB
Short-run boards for design validation, with an engineer on the phone.
A prototype exists to find problems early. Being able to reach the person who built it is worth more at this stage than a marginally lower unit price.
Multilayer PCB
Layer stack-ups for dense, high-speed and reliability-critical designs.
Multilayer work is where registration, lamination and drilling discipline separate suppliers. It is the construction the demanding sectors ask for.
Six industries where a board failing in the field is not an inconvenience
All six are reliability-critical and several are regulated. That puts process control and traceability at the centre of the work rather than at the edge of it.
Medical
Regulated work where the audit trail matters as much as the assembly.
Defence
Long service lives, harsh environments, and supply chains that must be accounted for.
Security
Continuously powered products where a field failure is a breach, not an inconvenience.
Automotive
Thermal cycling, vibration and a zero-tolerance attitude to intermittent faults.
Railway
Signalling and rolling stock electronics, where service life is measured in decades.
What local manufacture actually buys you
Not a lower price. A shorter feedback loop, and a person who answers.
Manufactured in Gauteng
No freight time, no customs clearance and no exchange-rate exposure between quotation and delivery. The variables that stretch an offshore schedule are simply not in the chain.
A named engineer answers
CET publishes direct contact details for its Engineering Manager, General Manager and Managing Director. When a board has a problem you reach the person who can act on it, not a ticket queue.
Same time zone
An offshore supplier costs you a turn of the clock on every exchange, and a design review is never a single exchange. CET is in yours.
Built for demanding sectors
Mining, medical, defence, security, automotive and railway. Sectors that punish inconsistency and expect the manufacturing record to be part of the deliverable.
Eight stages, and what goes wrong at each one
This is how printed circuit boards are manufactured generally. It is here because knowing where the risk sits is how you tell a considered supplier from an order taker.
- 01
Design data review
Incoming Gerber or ODB++ data is checked against what can actually be built before anything is committed to copper.
Most avoidable delays start here, in a design that cannot be manufactured as drawn.
- 02
Material selection
Laminate, copper weight and thickness are chosen against the board’s thermal and electrical duty.
The wrong laminate passes every electrical test and then fails in service.
- 03
Imaging
The copper pattern is transferred to the panel, defining every track and pad on the board.
Resolution and cleanliness at this stage set the floor for feature size.
- 04
Etch and lamination
Unwanted copper is removed, and multilayer constructions are pressed into a single board.
Layer-to-layer registration is decided here and cannot be corrected afterwards.
- 05
Drilling and plating
Holes are drilled and plated to connect layers electrically through the board.
Barrel plating quality is the single most common cause of intermittent field failure.
- 06
Solder mask and legend
Mask is applied to control where solder flows, and the silkscreen legend is printed.
Mask registration against fine-pitch pads decides assembly yield downstream.
- 07
Surface finish
The exposed copper is finished to stay solderable through storage and assembly.
Finish choice governs shelf life and fine-pitch placement reliability.
- 08
Inspection and electrical test
Boards are inspected and electrically tested against the design data before dispatch.
A board that ships untested moves the cost of finding the fault to the customer.
What engineers ask before sending a first order
Questions about specific tolerances, layer counts and lead times are answered directly — send your fabrication data and you will get real numbers rather than a brochure.
Where are your boards manufactured?
In Midrand, Gauteng. Manufacturing locally removes freight time and customs clearance from your schedule, and it means the people building your board are in the same time zone as the people who designed it.
Do you handle both bare boards and assembly?
Yes. CET manufactures printed circuit boards and assembles them. Keeping both with one supplier removes the handover between fabricator and assembler, which is usually where responsibility becomes unclear when a board fails on test.
What design files do you need to quote?
Standard fabrication output — Gerber or ODB++, an NC drill file, and a fabrication drawing stating your stack-up, finish and any controlled impedance requirement. For assembly, add a bill of materials and pick-and-place data.
Can I speak to an engineer rather than a salesperson?
Yes, and this is deliberate. CET publishes direct contact details for its Engineering Manager, General Manager and Managing Director. If a board has a problem, you reach the person who can act on it.
Which industries do you supply?
Mining, medical, defence, security, automotive and railway. All six are reliability-critical and several are regulated, which puts process control and traceability at the centre of the work rather than at the edge of it.
Do you take on prototype and short-run work?
Yes. Prototype work exists to surface problems early, and it is the stage where direct access to an engineer is worth the most.
How do I start a quotation?
Send your fabrication data through the contact form or email it to info@cetpcb.com. Include quantity, required finish and your target date, since those three change the answer more than anything else.
Next step
Send your fabrication data
Gerber or ODB++, a drill file and a fabrication drawing are enough to quote. Add a bill of materials and pick-and-place data if you need the board populated.
Or call +27 12 665 4860