Bill: Flex is a custom designed and custom produced product so it will always cost more than a catalog item. You pay for the high engineering content which is always needed when something new is in the works. Compared with PCB's, flex is far more compex because the substrate is less stable dimensionally which means you need much more elegant tooling and tool concepts. All this hits at the startup which means small orders can be really costly. Ever order a scustom automobile? duPont charges well over $150 per pound for typical flex dielectric compared with maybe $15 or so for PWB materials. ----begin to see the picture? When you buy a piece of flex you are buying both an interconnections device and a piece of assembly tooling. Not at all fair to compare wire cost with flex cost---remember that wire is cheap, but takes a great deal of ghand labor to convert into an interconnection. Flex sharply reduces the assembly labrto---wire sharply increases it. Rigid flex is the most complex and difficult flex product to built. It contains mixed dielectrics and requires a greatdeal of in-process tooling. Compared with PCB's, rigid-flex takes at least 3X the manufacturing steps. When you factor in ridiculous MIL spec testing (which is primarily based on the concept of a guaranteed loss of 20% of production) you begin to sense why rigid-flex is costly. But rigid-flex makes all sorts of high density, high-rel packages possible; without rigid flex we would not have any of our high-tech weapons systems, smart bombs, etc. If it's a matter of bringing the pilot back alive after a successful mission, would you carp about a few dollars? Can't understand your application----I don't see how you could replace a rigid-flex board with a piece of ribbon cable and a connector. I think you are in need of a good applications engineer. Tom Stearns 3 Brander Court Nashua NH 03063 603 889 2522 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DesignerCouncil 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 DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------