Hi Larry: We looked into using injection molded thermoplastic material for our high volume circuit boards about 15 years ago. We used both polysulfone(Udel from Union Carbide) and polyetherimide(Ultem from GE). Both materials were glass filled. The material was injection molded into the shape of the finished circuit. At that point they were either sputter coated or plated with electroless copper using a "plating on the plastic" pretreatment. The standard electroless copper line used for PCB's will not develop sufficient adhesion. From that point on they were handled as a normal PCB. Some of the advantages are they can be molded with 3D circuitry features and configurations with or without holes, have good heat resistance with a heat deflection temperature of about 400 F and good electrical properties. Some drawbacks are mold cost and complexity, revision changes require new hard tooling, board size is limited to about 12"X12" and equipment costs for injection molding, sputtering or plating on plastics can be high. Again our experience was with injection molding and coating these materials to fabricate PCB's. For our application it was decided to stay with conventional FR-4 laminates. Michael Barmuta Staff Engineer Fluke Corp. Everett WA 425-356-6076 -----Original Message----- From: Larry J. Fisher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 3:20 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Polysulfone I have a customer who is interested in making PWB's with polysulfone (apparently one of their customers requested this). I have done some research and found it is sold under the trade name of Udel and is made by Amoco (actually BP). It is a thermoplastic material and is available with up to 30% fiberglass. My questions are: 1. Does anyone know that the polysulfone is, in fact, used to make circuit boards? 2. What are the properties that are desirable with this material in a circuit board application? 3. If used for circuit boards, would you want to use material with the fiberglass? 4. Can you get copper clad sheets of the polysulfone or do you have to press the copper yourself? 5. If the answer to #4 is yes, where do you get it? Any help out there would be appreciated. Larry Fisher Allen Woods & Associates --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------