Minco Launches New Flex Circuit Design Guide

By John Baichtal

If you specify or design flexible printed circuits, you’ll want to check out the latest version of Minco’s Flex Circuit Design Guide. It includes sections on standard design recommendations, material tolerances, value-adds, and manufacturing tips. It’s the perfect resource for working with Minco to build a high-reliability flex circuit.

Designing and manufacturing a circuit requires engineers to make a number of important decisions, like whether to choose a Type I, II, III, or IV circuit, deciding on substrate and insulators, selecting an adhesive, or finding the right surface plating materials and methods. We’ll help you select which conductor width to specify and guide you through choosing the best termination method for your application. However, one of the biggest factors to consider when designing a new flex circuit might be its most obvious: it flexes. As such, factors such as layer count and thickness play into the decision process. Bend radii and repetitive flexing must also be taken into consideration, as does whether you want a factory-formed circuit that is flexed only during installation.

Our Guide not only educates readers on Minco’s standard capabilities and offers suggestions on how to lower costs and design for manufacturability, but we take it a step further by delving down into the details of flex circuit design. We lead you through such questions as, should you use a FR-4 stiffener or go with polyimide film? How do you control impedance and electrical noise? What are your options for rigid flex? We also cover our most exclusive offering, the ability to create an Integrated Solution by embedding Minco sensors and heaters, as well as surface mount and through-hole components, in a simplified flex circuit.

Even if you’re completely new to the world of flex circuits, the Guide has you covered with a FAQ section as well as a glossary of terms used by Minco. We’ve even included a New Flex Product checklist in the Guide that will streamline your next project launch.