Measuring PC Board Copper Thickness

Feb 22, 2007 29 Replies

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Yep, that's an option if the situation warrants the expense.

That's a viable qty to amortise the cost I think.

Yeah, it does depend on the requirement I suppose. I did a bit of digging and came up with this piece of current news

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I didn't go into the article too deeply but it seems that at least one manufacturer has cracked the problem of plating heavy (up to 6oz) copper for thermal plane application on multi-layer boards.

Yes, quite true. Depending on track density requirements you may have to reduce the track width to a minimum in some areas and in others you might want to keep the tracks widely separated. Thermal planes are a slightly different question but still introduce other problems. There is also the question of emi/rfi susceptibility - too much copper is not always good. I would guess than on many practical boards as much as 40 - 50% of the total copper volume has to be etched away. This would mean as much as 4oz per sqft of pcb using 8oz copper laminate would disappear into the etching bath. That would soon saturate the etchant so you would need a really efficient means of replacing the etchant quickly to do a big run of fairly large boards. Automated pcb manufacturing plants could handle it easily but smaller manufacturers might find it a bit daunting. Increases the costs dramatically.

it was viable in 10+ quantities. a 1-4-4-1 pcb was IIRC NZ$3 more than a

1-2-2-1 ($12 or so total)

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the biggest problem with heavy copper is the track-track spacing, followed by screen printing the overlay.

Thermal planes are a

I'd love to see you expand on this concept. I guess it depends what you connect the copper to.

I would guess than on many practical boards as much

I'd believe that. most PCB layouts I've seen have really sucked from an EMI perspective. A simple test - hold blank pcb up to the light. if you can see thru it, the layouts probably bad.

I try to keep as much copper as possible, after all I paid for it.

the heavy copper stuff I have done tends to have about 80-90% Cu, mainly governed by track-track spacing and voltage creepage/clearnace

This

Cheers Terry

Please forgive my ignorance, i seem to be unable to comprehend "specification is oz/sq. in" in the proper units or scale factor or something. According to the handbook of chemistry, the specific gravity (AKA density) of copper is from 8.93 to 8.95 grams per cubic centimeter; for the purposes of my question, call it 8.94 grams per cubic centimeter. If i have done my conversions correctly, that is about 5.167 ounces per cubic inch. So, if i have a square of copper on a PCB that is one inch by one inch, it would have to be over ine inch thick to be 6 ounce "plating" (!!!). And for some strange, unknown and incompernsible reason, that seems to be incorrect by at least a few orders of magnitude. So, pray tell, where is my error?

Robert Baer wrote in news:OBJGh.9167$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net:

maybe the spec is really oz/sq.ft.? (144 sq.in.)

a spec of oz/sq.IN. seems odd to me.

Jim Yanik jyanik at kua.net

"AIUI"?? What does that mean? (not found in WikiPedia).

In not simply asking "shouldn't that be oz/sq ft?" rather than carrying on like a crazed pedant.

Using square feet for area, and inches for thickness, the value is fairly close. Using 8.94 grams per cubic centimeter converts to 744 ounces per foot*foot*inch, which gives 1.344 mils per ounce. Snooping on the web, i see the "standard" for plating copper (at 20 amps per square foot, the nominal and recommended value) produces (after conversion) 1.358 mils per ounce. That means that the plated copper is less dense than pure copper and thus may include the organic additives and "pinholes" (to use the term loosely). I found no reference that discussed the plated density of copper VS current - even in crude terms; only that the "throwing power" is increased at 10 amps per square foot.

As I Understand It. YMMV (which took me years to figure out, I was too ashamed to ask ;)

C, T

Google [acronyms aiui].

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