Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1073397
28 FLEX007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2019 considerations, and others from the compact assembly needs. You can eventually form a small device with a lot of components and 3D assembled in a very limited geometry with reliable signal transmissions; these are the two areas where we see people adopting rigid-flex and flex. Matties: You're in an interesting position because you deal with the people integrating flex into their products. Zha: For PCB manufacturing, we mainly deal with their PCB interfaces. We rarely deal with their system-level designers, but we did talk about why they require this or what they look for, so we may have some understanding. Matties: We constantly hear that collaboration from system design to the fabricator and assembler before designing the board is critical and that com- panies would wind up with a better product overall if they fol- lowed that path. Is that the case? Zha: That is true, and I agree with that point. If the PCB man- ufacturer can work with cus- tomers with early involvement in terms of flex assembly or rigid-flex design, that will defi- nitely help the cost, quality, and reliability of the products. Flex material is very different than the mate- rial used for rigid products. There are also a lot of manual handling processes during flex or rigid-flex manufacturing. For example, how do you design the cavity inside, how do you want to remove the cap of the cavity, and what kind of connection are you trying to realize? All these considerations are going to be linked to the cost, quality, and challenge of manufacturing the FPCs. Early involvement will improve the understanding of the manufacturing process and the final product needs from both parties and put considerations of manufacturability of board and final assembly before the product is designed. It is not straightforward as with rigid PCBs; without communication and careful con - sideration, a very small design feature that may not be necessary to the function could cause a huge difficulty for the fabricator and could eventually become a yield and cost issue. It's quite different from traditional rigid PCBs we manufacture at other plants right now. Matties: Where is the growth you're experiencing coming from? Is it coming from customers using flex for the first time? Zha: From our experience, most of our custom- ers are not actually using flex for the first time, but rather we are seeing more project teams within their organization start to adopt flex and rigid-flex technology. Even within one organization, there may be some individuals who are quite familiar with flex prod- ucts, but there may be other teams that just started and are puzzled about the whole pro- cess, materials properties, etc. From our current situation, I would say probably half of our customers have a good under- standing of flex and rigid-flex, and the other half are less expe- rienced with flex/rigid-flex or are working with it for the first time. Even with the half who understands flex, flex assembly, and rigid-flex processes, their under- standing of it is not as deep as their knowledge of rigid PCBs. Usually it involves a lot of our rigid-flex/flex field application engineers' early involvement efforts to provide design consul- tations and the education they need. Matties: When you talk about educating customers, what do they lack the most? I know you are talking about manufacturing process knowledge as well, but what is really needed overall? Zha: It starts with the base material used for flex and rigid-flex products; most of it is poly- Clay Zha