Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Reasons Why The Flex Market Continues to Shine

According to IPC's collectors and reporters of market statistics, flexible circuits continue to be the brightest sector of the overall printed circuit market. The reasons for this are many but, at the end of the day, it generally boils down to the fact that flexible circuits are an excellent way to solve interconnection challenges in a cost-effective way.

Cost efficacy is the important concept to keep in mind in this discussion. Very often a flexible circuit will have a price that is above what one might be able to procure a rigid PCB of similar layout, but the flex circuit will offer capabilities that will allow the user to garner much greater benefit and utility.

The fact that flex circuits are being increasingly called upon to solve problems seems to reflect a fundamental change in the thinking of purchasing departments. For the last decade, there has been brutal price pressure brought to bear on printed circuit products by OEM purchasers. There was a point a little more than a decade ago when OEM roadmaps were pushing the PCB industry to sell printed circuits for less than the cost of the raw materials.

This is one of the risks of linear extrapolation of pricing expectations based on past performance. At some point, the curve must go flat or even rise, if the costs of raw materials and energy have risen, as we have seen during recent times with copper and oil, the latter being used both for resin production and for energy. Printed circuit fabricators are real-life product manufacturers, not alchemists who can turn lead into gold.   

In the past, purchasers tended to demand the lowest price with little appreciation of what had to be done to deliver the products to them. Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright and humorist, once defined a cynic as an individual who "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." For better or worse, the same definition could often be applied to those individuals who have occupied desks in OEM purchasing departments over the history of the industry.

However, there must have been some learning going on in recent years as indicated by the still growing popularity of flexible circuits. It seems that there is ever greater understanding and appreciation of the fact that, while a flexible circuit might be more expensive than its rigid counter part, its versatility will enable the user to reduce overall cost - often significantly. This is a key point.

Too many purchasing systems only track cost "in the door" and not through the system and into the field. The rewards to the purchasers often go to them based on the lower prices they are able to negotiate, but this is a dangerous and potentially expensive proposition. The potential for problems and yield losses in production and, worse, failure in the field, either of which could quickly strip away any modest price advantage that might have been gained and the latter of the two which could cause the loss of a customer for a long time if not forever. As one highly evolved and enlightened product manager once advised his people: "Please don't save me any money on this project, I can't afford it." Obviously this was said with some intended humor and not meant to open the checkbook to extravagance, but it did convey the message that often, by trying to save a few cents on some component, an entire system could be put at risk. As the adage goes, "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link."

Circling back to the main topic, flexible circuits have the potential to be one of the stronger links. Their numerous technical and economic advantages - light weight, low profile, an intrinsic capability to reduce both the levels of interconnection (which corresponds to increased reliability) and the volume of the final assembly, just to name a few - make flexible circuits a highly attractive choice for interconnections. If the reader is not familiar with flexible circuits, there are plenty of resources available online.

It is recommended that the reader seek out and engage one of the many reputable flexible circuit suppliers that service the industry. Their technical sales people and engineers are well equipped to guide the first-time user around the many potential problems they might encounter. Once you have successfully completed your first design, you will see exactly why the IPC stats continue to report growth for this important area of electronic interconnection technology.      

Verdant Electronics Founder and President Joseph (Joe) Fjelstad is a four-decade veteran of the electronics industry and an international authority and innovator in the field of electronic interconnection and packaging technologies with more than 250 U.S. and international patents issued or pending. He is also the author of "Flexible Circuit Technology" and author, co-author or editor of several other books and more than 300 technical papers, articles and columns. To contact Joe, click here.