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need flex manufacturer

Hello, all,

I am working on a project for wearable safely lighting. I made prototypes myself, just like making rigid PC boards. Now, I am looking for a commercial fabricator for flex PC boards, and am having a big problem finding anybody that is affordable for the application.

I need one 6 x 12" single-sided flex circuit, and two smaller ones that are about 3 x 10", per unit. Prices I've seen are over $100 for the big one. This is not super-exotic stuff, no controlled impedances, RF, microwave frequencies, etc. I just need copper laminated onto a flexible substrate, and very relaxed trace/space dimensions, for mounting LEDs and resistors. No solder mask, no silk screen, just bare copper.

Does anyone know a place that specializes in LOW-TECH flex PCBs?

(I've also heard rumors that these can be made by the outfits that make metallic self-stick labels by a die-cutting process MUCH cheaper than the conventional etching process. Anybody know vendors of this technology?)

Thanks much, I hope somebody has some leads.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson
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Are you looking for a large quantity of these flex circuits? I think die cutting may be inexpensive per unit *after* you have amortized a large setup fee for making the die.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

If you are buying one (1) then ~$100 seems like a good price.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

I was going to recommend the following company to you but they have moved their website so I can only show you the archived copy:

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They offer very low setup and per-area cost since it is ink-jetted. There is some info about them here:
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I think this company bought them out:
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Reply to
Chris Jones

Well, we HOPE to move into large scale production, but are not there, YET. But, the guy has dreams of making quite a few thousand units. We'd at least want to have contacts and find out how the costs work out on those.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

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This looks quite promising! Thanks!

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

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Hmmm, on the other hand, it looks more like an incubator lab than a commercial fabricator.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

I have a couple of the old Microsoft natural keyboards and one went bad. When I opened it to see if I could repair it I found it used a large flex circuit board and one of the traces had oxidized away in a spot near the join of the two clam shells. I never figured out just why it deteriorated, but it seemed to me to be something rather thinner than standard 1/2 oz copper as on a PCB. I wonder if it was printed rather than etched. It might not be copper after all. I'll see if I can find it and try using a bit of sand paper to check for copper. I never fixed it so I can't do much more harm and while it's apart maybe I'll fix it.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

It is probably silver ink. I get good results with the material 125-15 from:

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You need to keep it refrigerated, and to cure it you bake (ideally 170 deg C). It has no mechanical strength as a glue so don't try to use it as that. I find it MUCH more conductive than the silver loaded epoxy products that I have tried.

Reply to
Chris Jones

What country are you in ?

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Reply to
TTman

If you order 1 FPCB, they would think you are joking or not really serious. I would order 1000 and dump 990 of them.

Reply to
edward.ming.lee

Well, the problem there is he might end up paying $20,000 or more for the

1000 pieces. This guy is just starting out the business, and already sold two units below our cost to make them. There's that old joke "We're losing money on each one, but we'll make it up in volume." We KNOW we will pay a lot more for a low-volume run of these boards, but there's not much choice unless he gets funded on "Shark Tank", which he is scheduled to appear on.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

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