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Hi,
I am currently working on a small study relating to the Flex-Rigid PCB
market. The study is to mainly focus on proto-type manufacture of Flex-Rigid
circuits, what influences a designer to specify a Flex-Rigid (or what stops
him/her from specifying one) and what is required for a PCB fabricator to
make the transition from purely manufacturing rigid PCBs to manufacturing
Flex-Rigid PCBs.
To help with the study I hope to canvass as many people as possible in the
PCB design and manufacture community and as part of this activity I have
detailed a few questions below which I would be most interested in getting
your opinions on.
If I get enough responses I will collate the answers and send the results to
all who responded.
Questions aimed at fabricators (designers also please feel free to comment)
1. How long have you been working on flex-rigid?
2. How long did the introduction of flex-rigid (i.e. production,
training/recruitment, sales pipeline) take - what problems did you
encounter?
3. What sort of up-front investment did you need to make in the introduction
of flex-rigid manufacture services?
4. Did you make the transition directly from rigid to flex-rigid, or did you
move to flexi as an interim?
5. What percentage of work/orders does flex-rigid represent and has the
amount of flex-rigid work grown over the last 24/12 months?
6. Has there been a decline in rigid orders with the introduction of
flex-rigid?
7. Are specific industry sectors or customers from specific countries,
requesting flex-rigid, if so, which are they?
8. Has flex-rigid provided new customers to your business, and are you
supplying new industry sectors?
9. How does cost of materials and supply chain for flex-rigid compare with
rigid?
10. How do manufacturing yields for flex-rigid compare with those for rigid?
Questions aimed at designers (fabricators also please feel free to comment)
11. What is the primary driver for specifying a flex-rigid circuit? space,
cost, reliability?
12. Does the need to have the mechanical design near complete (i.e. complex
flex-rigid shape) adversely effect the choice to go flex-rigid? i.e. adding
a cable and connector makes life easier!
13. Are fast turn-around flex-rigid PCB prototyping services available to
you? (5 days or less)
14. If proto-typing services are available is the cost prohibitive?
15. If you are currently designing flex-rigid circuits (or have done
recently) do you consider the designs to be more "high tech" than the norm?
i.e. higher layer counts, buried vias, micro vias, controlled impedance etc.
16. What other technical reasons effect the choice of flex-rigid over
conventional rigid circuits?
17. In your experience what business areas use the most flex-rigid PCB
solutions? Military, medical, high tech consumer?
Thanks in anticipation.
Steve
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