PCB Technical - Advantages and future development of FPC

FPC (flexible circuit board for short) is a highly reliable and excellent flexible printed circuit board made of polyimide or polyester film as the base material. It has the characteristics of high wiring density, light weight, thin thickness and good bendability.

In the production process, in order to prevent excessive opening and short circuits from causing too low yield or reducing rough process problems such as drilling, rolling, cutting, etc., FPC board scrap and replenishment problems, and evaluate how to select materials to achieve customer use For the best effect of flexible circuit boards, pre-production pretreatment is particularly important.

Pre-production pretreatment, there are three aspects that need to be processed, and all three aspects are completed by engineers. The first is the FPC board engineering evaluation, which is mainly to evaluate whether the customer's FPC board can be produced, whether the company's production capacity can meet the customer's board-making requirements and unit cost; if the engineering evaluation is passed, the next step is to prepare materials immediately to meet each production link Finally, the engineer processes the customer’s CAD structure drawing, gerber line data and other engineering documents to suit the production environment and production specifications of the production equipment, and then delegates the production drawings and MI (Engineering Process Card) to the The production department, document control, purchasing and other departments enter the regular production process.

Production Process

Double panel system

Cutting - Drilling - PTH - Electroplating - Pre-treatment - Dry Film Pasting - Alignment - Exposure - Development - Graphic Plating - Stripping - Pretreatment - Dry Film Pasting - Alignment Exposure - Development - Etching - Stripping - Surface Treatment - Paste the cover film - Pressing - Curing - Immersion of nickel gold - Printing characters - Shearing - Electrical test - Punching - Final inspection - Packaging - Shipment

Single panel system

Cutting - Drilling - Pasting Dry Film - Aligning - Exposure - Developing - Etching - Stripping - Surface Treatment - Covering Film - Pressing - Curing - Surface Treatment - Immersion Nickel Gold - Printing Characters - Cutting - Electrical Measurement - Punching Cutting - final inspection - packaging - shipment

characteristic

⒈Short: short assembly time

All lines are configured, eliminating the need to connect extra cables

⒉ Small: smaller than PCB

Can effectively reduce the product volume and increase the convenience of carrying

⒊ Light: lighter than PCB (hard board)

Can reduce the weight of the final product

4 Thin: thickness is thinner than PCB

Can improve flexibility. Strengthen the assembly of three-dimensional space in a limited space

Prospects

FPC will continue to innovate from four aspects in the future, mainly in:

1. Thickness. The thickness of FPC must be more flexible and thinner;

2. Folding resistance. The ability to bend is an inherent feature of FPC. In the future, FPC must be more resistant to bending, which must exceed 10,000 times. Of course, this requires a better substrate;

3. Price. At this stage, the price of FPC is much higher than that of PCB. If the price of FPC comes down, the market will definitely be much broader.

4. Technological level. In order to meet various requirements, the FPC process must be upgraded, and the minimum aperture and minimum line width/line spacing must meet higher requirements.