Anyway, also visible on the photo is the exceptional solder mask and especially board outline alignment. It's not a large via by any stretch of the imagination: it has a 10 mil hole, but the very thin plating and lack of fill makes it seem very wide. That has to be the roundest via you have ever seen. This is almost a microscopic view of the PCB, looking at an 1812 Kelvin sense resistor footprint with a via to the other side. And because almost everything in the process is lasercut, alignment and tolerances are absolutely stellar. With 2/2 mil copper width/spacing (yes, you read that right) and lasercut vias, you can use this technology not just for flexible stuff, but also to break out extremely dense BGA packages for just $6.50 per PCB. But not just the looks are good, the design rules are incredible. The substrate is actually a bit thinner than 150µm and very transparent. I have to say - this is an absolutely stunning PCB technology. Prices are pretty great $65 for 5x5cm up to $80 for 10x10cm.ĮNIG (Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold) ~2µm
The service is back, you can find it here. However, after informing about this service, I heard from the PCB service behind Itead studio that they will be re-launching the product after the spring festival. That's past tense, because it seems right now that I'm writing this blog, they are discontinuing the service. For some time however, offered an up to 100x100mm flexible PCB manufacturing. Flexible PCBs (also called Flat Flex PCBs) of course immediately sprang to mind, but until very recently this technology was incredibly expensive - last time I ordered one from Cyner the invoice was well above 2000 euros for a small prototype. I didn't have any control over its position or shape, so the PCB had to be as flexible as possible to accomodate any usage scenario. Overview of the PCBFor my work work I needed a flexible PCB that could fit inside more or less arbitrary electronics to function as a sensor. If you haven't done so already, I highly recommend reading my previous blog post about seeedstudio's 4 layer PCB quality for some background on the subject. I say hobby space mainly because of prices, not necessarily quality. This is part two of a - probably - longer running series on PCB quality in the 'hobby' space.
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