Thanks so much for doing videos like these, although the target audience is small the audience is the "high end designer" and it saves me / us SO MUCH time researching.
Ata is awesome. Tonnes of brilliant insight into designing flex PCBs. They feel a lot more accessible now to me as someone who's only worked with rigid PCBs.
Great video, thanks Robert! I often saw black flexible cables and thought it was a special mask, but it turns out to be EMI shielding. Very informative, keep posting videos!
Thank you very much Robert! Just followed the whole video. It is very detailed, answered most of my questions. Didn’t see too much about Altium and how to draw the stiffner area, guess it’s a mechanical layer. But other things were covered very extensive. ❤
Yes its just a mechanical layer. If your stiffener has no PTH holes, then just draw a mechanical layer to the dimensions with holes in it. If stiffener has PTH holes, then it can still be drawn as is, but you need to identify the holes as PTH. Bottom line is that you draw it like a mechanical layer.
Whow, this is a brilliant video session.. i just had to watch it whole and write notes.. big thanks to you Robert and Ata. You covered many details that I need for designing flex PCB. For sure I will have to put link of acknowledgement if I manage to make a successful product. I kind of hope there are totally clear materials for Coverlay that do a decent protection of copper if PET is used as a core Flex substrate (total clearness is a design requirements). I think 3M transparent material was mentioned by Ata for stiffener at some point in the videao. Thanks for all.
Please guide about layout guidelines of rigid pcbs for space applications. Is it allowed to define power and gnd split on same plane if seperate planes cannot be defined. How to use signal integrity rules in altium designer for beginners.
Yes you can but the issue is that in order to bond stiffeners with flex, you need to put put the boards in press machine to ensure bonding is good. When you put them in press machine, you have to create type of a fixture (basically a FR-4 panel with cavities for stiffener), and put as many boards in a fixture as possible to maximize efficiency. Bottom line is that it is a very labour sensitive process. I am not saying that its complicated process (in most cases its not that difficult) but its if very labour sensitive. If you don't use press to bond stiffeners to flex, you may have delamination between stiffener and flex or stiffeners may even come off.
We used a flex pcb which had 20 twisted pair conductors and fully screened. so there were plated through holes in the flex as he tracks swapped sides to form the twisted pairs. the screen had to go into a x-hatch pattern where the flex had to bend. after all that design effort would you believe it we got one connector 180 deg out. So had to do it all over again.
