What’s the difference between rigid PCB and flexible PCB?
Nov 08, 2021
What’s the difference between rigid PCB and flexible PCB?
PCB usually refers to printed circuit board, which is called rigid PCB. PCB is generally made of FR4 substrate, also called rigid PCB, which can not be bent and flexed. PCB is generally used in some places that do not need to be bent and have a relatively hard strength, such as computer motherboards, cell phone motherboards, etc.
FPC, in fact, belongs to a kind of PCB, but there is a big difference with the traditional printed circuit board. FPC is usually called flexible board, also known as flexible circuit board or flexible printed circuit board. FPC generally uses PI as the substrate, is a flexible material, can be arbitrarily bent, flex. FPC is generally used in the need to flex and some small parts of the connection, but now is not only this, smart phones have been made into a bendable screen, you need to use FPC.
Flexible Printed Circuit Board is a kind of Flexible, folding degrees higher polyester film or polyimide substrate after a series of production processes and made of a kind of components and circuits can be put, and can finish electrical functions with high reliability, good flexibility and light weight of the Printed Circuit Board, also can call it Flexible plate or soft Board, its English name is a Flexible Printed Circuit Board, FPCB for short. In the early days, it was mainly used in aerospace and military equipment, but now it is widely used in consumer electronic equipment. Compared with the traditional printed circuit board, flexible printed circuit board can be summarized as the following characteristics: small body, light weight and thin thickness; Flexible and flexible; High reliability; The cost is low; Excellent dielectric and heat resistance. Due to its advantages of being light, thin and flexible, the production equipment and equipment can be small and light, which is also an inevitable trend of the future development of electronic equipment and products. Therefore, the development prospect of flexible board is better than that of traditional printed circuit board.
In fact, the FPC is not only a circuit board that can be flexed, but it is also an important design method for connecting the circuit structure, and this special structure with other electronic product design can build a variety of different applications, so from this point of view, FPC is very different from PCB.
For the PCB form, unless the circuitry is made in a three-dimensional form by means of a film-filled adhesive, the board is generally flat in condition. Therefore, to make full use of three-dimensional space, FPC is a good solution. In terms of hard boards, the common space extension solution is to use slots plus interface cards. But FPC can make similar structure by simply using the adapter design, and it is also more flexible in the direction design. Using an FPC connection, two hard boards can be connected into a set of parallel circuit system, and can also be turned into any angle to adapt to different product shapes and designs.
FPC can of course use terminal connection for line connection, but also can use soft and hard board to avoid these connection mechanism, a single FPC can use the layout configuration of many hard board and will be connected. This approach reduces connector and terminal interference, which can improve signal quality and product reliability.
FPC can make the thinnest circuit boards because of its material characteristics, and thinness is one of the most important demands of the electronics industry. Because FPC is a thin film material for circuit making, it is also an important material for thin design in the future electronics industry. As the plastic material is very poor heat transfer, so the thinner the plastic substrate on the heat dissipation will be more favorable. General FPC thickness difference with the hard board are more than tens of times, so the rate of heat dissipation will have tens of times difference. Soft board has such characteristics, so this kind of high wattage parts FPC assembly products, many will be attached to the metal plate to improve the heat dissipation effect.
For FPC, one of the important features is that when the solder joints are close together and the thermal stress is high, it can reduce the stress damage between the joints because of the elasticity of FPC. This advantage is especially for some surface mount can absorb its thermal stress, this kind of problem will be reduced a lot.
As a rigid PCB manufacturer,High Precision Technology specialise on single-sided,double layer to 12 layers PCB manufacturing.We have more than 10 years experience of manufacturing.Welcome to send us email for more details. info@gjzpcb.com
