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Minco is preparing a single day workshop/training session to be done in a live format for groups up to 15 people gathered in a small conference facility to be located as close as practical to the attendees. This would be an educational forum that would benefit drafters and engineers involved in flex circuit design. Some prior experience addressing flex design issues would be beneficial. We would expect to have 2-3 Minco engineers providing training in the following areas:

Terminology
Comparison to wire cables and rigid circuits, factors favoring each alternative
Constructions (single-sided, double-sided, multilayer, rigid-flex)
Material selection
Standards and regulatory bodies
Manufacturing processes (steps in a typical manufacturing flow chart)
Roll vs panel processes
Trimming options
Testing parameters
General cost drivers for flex fabrication
Design process (operational, electrical and mechanical specification)
Generating CAD data files for manufacture
Termination options
Bending and flexing considerations
Tips to improve flexibility
Thermal requirements
Interactions of electrical and mechanical properties of circuits
Plating considerations
Covercoats and coverlays
Stiffeners vs rigid-flex
Strain relief
Physical mock-ups
Impact of RoHS/WEEE
Opportunity to have some one-on-one time with engineers to review your design concept

Minco would also provide a designer toolkit of material samples and built up circuits demonstrating concepts reviewed in this class. We anticipate providing interactive sessions involving common mistakes in drawing generation and circuit design.

We would love to hear from the forum community on flexible circuit design issues that most often impact them. Are there topics beyond the scope of what is listed above that are important to circuit designers that would increase the value of this offering?

Minco has not set a price for this training and would appreciate feedback on what value this might have to the community. We would be providing the training facility with a couple of coffee/light snack breaks and a lunch. Again, registration would be limited to a small number like 15 people to promote interactivity. What would be a reasonable charge for such an offering?

*Cricket sounds*
I guess too many people have read this great article in CircuiTree on how to design for Flex Circuits, they don't need the class?

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More cowbell!

Hi Minco!

Did you guys know there used to be a Flexible Circuit Design Conference a long time ago and they stopped? Not enough registrations?  I was wondering what happened with these conference. It would be nice that Minco take over this conference so that everyone from flexible design group from vary companies will attend this conference again. It would also be nice to meet all flex designers there.

Thanks!

Mark

Mark,

Yes, engineers at Minco recall attending the IPC Flexible Circuit Design Conference. It was fairly well attended until they started to move the location around and took a fatal blow when it was moved to Dallas in June under sweltering heat.

IPC is still a great organization but exhibits a strong rigid circuit influence in any of their circuit conferences. They have an upcoming Midwest Conference in Sept and Apex will be coming up again early in 2008. These both have many design sessions but deal again largely with the rigid circuits.

Minco does agree that there is a need for more robust training and discussion of design issues pertinent to flexible circuits. It is challenging to develop training materials that could be presented in this type of conference format where you may only have 30-45 minutes to cover a subject. More time is required to get into any level of detail. Check out our media link under the news section of the website and you will see that Minco has been active in providing educational material including a flex design webinar with Q&A session.

You should also check out the training that Minco has offered at PCB West and will again at PCB East:

http://www.pcbeast.com/conf/schedule.html

Wednesday, October 24

1:30 pm - 5 pm
Technical Conference courses

S11 - NEW! Designing with Flex in Mind
Speakers Mark A. Verbrugge and Mark Finstad, Minco Products Inc.

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Vitreous Humor
"Eye can see clearly now..."

I know this post is a little old, however, I wanted to let everyone know that we are now offering licensing for our flexible circuit technology:New technology available for licensing from Thermotrax, LLC:  Thermotrax technology allows for the creation of simple low cost circuits for applications wide variety of industries; such as automotive instrument clusters or temperature measuring devices, medical sensors and many other applications.

A simple, proven and very commercially viable method to partition a conductive web or plane into active and inactive segments with the active segments being useful conductive circuits capable of conducting current or signal. This process is fast and consistent with capabilities for very high Cpk's. No hostile chemicals are used and no emissions are released and any materials or scrap trimmed being benign. Conductive media can be aluminum, copper, tin or deposited conductive coatings such as carbon.

If you're interested drop by our website to learn more about technology, please visit: Thermotrax

Sorry the link didn't show up properly on the last post: The website is Thermotrax

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