Many FPCB designer are not familiar with the manufacturer process and limitation. I always found design does not meet DFx requirement and insist on their design and finally bring lot of quality issue after mass production.
Here I ask FPCB supplier provide some of the design for the flex cable (FPCB) manufacturing ability and hope it will prevent future quality fail or cost high due to yield lose.
Basically I do think designer and FPC manufacturer shall make more communication to understand each other requirement and make FPCB lower cost and higher quality and yield rate. This shall be win-win.
The PTF uses silk-screen to print the silver and carbon combination conductive inks on PET substitute to reach lower cost purpose as compare with FPC (Flexible Printing Circuit). Unfortunately, the screen-printing still has some ability limits. Especially that it has problem for fine trace width and fine space. This article will discuss screen-printing on PET limitation.
Polymer Thick Film (PTF) flexible circuits are manufactured by screen-printing conductive ink onto flexible substrates such as PET (Polyethylene terephthalate). It can be single layer or multi-layers circuit by further screen-printing dielectric materials as insulating layer and applying through-hole technologies.
