-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Rigid-flex Design Tips and Best Practices
April 10, 2017 | Craig Armenti, Mentor GraphicsEstimated reading time: 1 minute
As rigid-flex design becomes commonplace across many industry segments, education on terminology, requirements, processes and best practices are all critical in order to ensure a high probability for first-pass success. As the name indicates, rigid-flex circuits are comprised of a combination of rigid and flexible board technologies. These types of designs consist of multiple layers of flexible circuit substrates attached internally and/or externally to one or more rigid boards.
By combining the advantages of the two technologies, designers have more options when working with dense designs that must conform to a specific form factor. Rigid-flex is a truly enabling technology that lets product development teams cost-efficiently apply greater functionality to a smaller volume of space while at the same time providing the mechanical stability required by most applications.
Prior to the advent of rigid-flex design, when a product required a flex PCB (or multiple flex PCBs), the flex and rigid PCBs were designed separately. Each PCB contained one or more physical connectors in order to assemble the individual boards into a product-level design. In this design methodology, the flex designs were assigned to a specialist who was familiar with stackup and material options along with the best practices and requirements for flex-specific items such as bend regions and stiffeners. There is, after all, a certain science to flex design that, when properly applied, can help ensure first-pass success. While this traditional “design-separately-then-assemble” approach minimized potential issues with the flex portions of the product, it also had several inherent disadvantages. These include the cost associated with the physical connectors; the space required for the physical connectors; the need to properly manage interconnects that have to transition between the separate rigid and flex PCBs (through the connectors); and, of course, the time and cost associated with assembly. The move to the current generation of rigid-flex technology mitigates these issues; however, they are replaced with a different set of challenges and concerns. The good news is these challenges and concerns can be alleviated simply by following some key best practices and guidelines.
To read this entire article, which appeared in the March 2017 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.
Suggested Items
I-Connect007 Editor’s Choice: Five Must-Reads for the Week
05/03/2024 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007This week’s most important news is strategic—and telling. When one puts together the IPC industry reports, we simply have to include the recent conversation with Shawn DuBravac and Tom Kastner. On the design side, check out the latest “On The Line With…” podcast featuring Brad Griffin from Cadence Design Systems, discussing SI and PI in the realm of intelligent system design.
Synopsys, Samsung Electronics Collaborate to Achieve First Production Tapeout of Flagship Mobile CPU
05/03/2024 | PRNewswireSynopsys, Inc. announced that Samsung Electronics has achieved successful production tapeout for its high-performance mobile SoC design, including flagship CPUs and GPUs, with 300MHz higher performance using Synopsys.ai™ full stack AI-driven EDA suite and a broad portfolio of Synopsys IP on Samsung Foundry's latest Gate-All-Around (GAA) process technologies.
Altair Acquires Research in Flight, Forging a New Path for Aerodynamic Analysis
05/03/2024 | AltairAltair a global leader in computational intelligence, announced it has acquired Research in Flight, maker of FlightStream®, which provides computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software with a large footprint in the aerospace and defense sector and a growing presence in marine, energy, turbomachinery, and automotive applications.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Software Solutions for Circuit Board Challenges
05/03/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPONolan Johnson speaks with Will Webb from Aster Technologies about their software solutions for design teams, manufacturing, test engineers, and process engineers. Aster's software addresses the increasing complexities of circuit boards and the need for alternative testing methods.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: My Role as a Technology Solutions Director
05/02/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOPeter Tranitz, senior director of technology solutions at IPC, shares insights into his role as the design initiative lead. He details his advocacy work, industry support, and the responsibilities of the design initiative committee. The conversation also covers the revamping of standards, the IPC Design Competition, and the implementation of design rules in software tools.