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Seven Guidelines for Using Flexible Circuit Technology in Your Product
Flexible printed circuits offers design choices that may lessen your product cost, enhance products features and enhance the robustness, if the right steps are used your product start up. Following these guidelines can help a designer or engineer more successfully utilize flexible circuit technology into packaging solutions.

Do a little research on flexible circuit terminology as this can help with supplier communication and create a better design. Many terms utilized by your suppliers are industry specific terms. There are lots of sources for design guides or terminology including the IPC (see "Terms and Definitions for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits" IPC-T-50 Rev. H). You don't need to become a specialist, but understanding the correct terminology will go quite a distance in improving the look process.

Choose the best supplier to your requirements; there are numerous flex circuit manufacturers that could gladly work with you, however, not every supplier is going to be able to fill your unique needs. You have to ask a great deal of questions about your own future supplier. Does the potential supplier have experience in your industry? Can they demonstrate proficiency in the look your are attempting to build? If it has fine lines, what's their demonstrated capability for line width and spacing? How long have they been building flex circuits, what is their longterm viability, may be the management team committed to continued investment in this technology. These along with other questions should be part of your homework in choosing the right supplier. You should also talk to other customers of your prospective supplier; insist on getting customer references as a disorder of doing business. Speaking with a few of the suppliers customers can provide you a ton of insight on what it really is like employing them.

Follow design input from your own supplier. Your supplier understands making a reliable circuit and knows the limitations of its manufacturing capability. Forcing your design on your flex circuit supplier is a sure way to decrease the reliability and increase costs. Sharp conductor corners create stress points; radius turns will have a longer life. Cracked conductors at solder joints are very common in poorly designed flex; this problem can be mitigated during the design phase. Filleting the intersection point between a trace and a pad tends to distribute stresses that may occur once the circuit is bent. Many suppliers will offer comprehensive redesign to insure that common reliability issues are addressed and the design is manufacturable.

Creating a technical contact at your flexible circuit supplier can dramatically improve communication and smooth the merchandise introduction process. A strong relationship might help assure mutual investment to the success of the program. Communication with a contact that can explain the processes, materials, design guidelines and cost implications will make the project more likely to succeed and enhance the experience.

Make sure that your supply chain team understands that a flexible circuit is custom designed and engineered with unique features specific to the end use application. Assuming that this product is really a commodity that can be purchased anywhere will most likely lead you to higher costs, poor delivery and reduced reliability.

Allow Additional info in your total project to benefit from your suppliers expertise to help you incorporate cost savings ideas and enhance the design robustness. An overly compressed time line will result in higher costs and lower quality because the supplier is forced to make a poorly designed product in an instant turn environment.

Analyze the complete cost of ownership instead of just looking at the merchandise price. Utilizing check here -shore supplier might look like you are saving money, but communication issues, insufficient timely tech support team, travel costs and delayed project set up costs can quickly eat up any piece part savings that an overseas supplier gives. Some of the most reasonably priced flexible circuits are created in the United States. These companies are employing highly automated equipment and may compete with anyone on the planet. Other US suppliers specialize in lower volume with high product mix production, a location that lots of overseas producers will struggle at.
While most of the above items seem like common sense to the experienced flex user, often, buyers seem to dramatically under estimate what is involved with successfully utilizing flexible circuits within their electronic packages. Utilizing a number of the guidelines given in this article will hopefully improve your chances of an effective start up.

Dave Becker is the V.P. of Sales and Marketing at All Flex Flexible Circuits. Dave has been in the flexible pcb circuit industry for days gone by 32 years with a number of positions in Quality Engineering, Product Management, and Sales Management. Dave has authored several technical articles on flexible circuitry design, manufacturing, and new product introduction processes. All Flex Flexible Circuits focuses on low to medium volume flexible printed circuits and flex circuit assembly. Their featured products include Flexible Heater Circuits and Maxi-Flex.
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