Bloody Brilliant: Flex PCBs via Ninjaflex!!!

[anon4321 16]

http://hackaday.com/2014/10/28/make-flexible-pcbs-with-your-3d-printer/

 

[IRobertI 429]

Personally I would use good ol toner transfer. Much better resolution and less fiddly.

 

[gr5 964]

From comments below the article:

 

Galane says:

October 28, 2014 at 8:47 pm

Can’t iron the metal coated fabrics so toner transfer is out for them.

 

[IRobertI 429]

That doesn't make any sense. How can they populate a flex cable if it can't take the relatively low temps of a clothes iron?

 

[gr5 964]

Not sure. I don't even know what flex cable or toner transfer is. But my clothes iron gets impressively hot. Probably 200C. Ninjaflex may be deposited at 240C but is around 100C within 3 seconds. So perhaps it doesn't heat the "flex cable" as much as an iron?

 

[IRobertI 429]

It's the yellow-orange-brownish thin ribbons you can find in electronics. It's basically a very thin PCB. Some simply function as a replacement for a cable and are attached using ZIF-sockets (zero insertion force). Others are soldered directly to the board, or glued, or have contacts soldered to them. Some come without components on them and others can have passives (resistors, capacitors) attached.

Now, I don't pretend to be an expert on these things, not even close. But, I would assume that they'd be using reflow soldering the components on there and these days it's mostly that icky lead free stuff being used. Here's a random profile for reflowing with lead-free paste. As you can see it gets rather hot:

http://s.eeweb.com/members/ixys/blog/2014/01/23/Lead-Free-Solder-Reflow-for-Semiconductor-Power-Devices-1390460256.JPG

 

[pm_dude 26]

Makes me think about some booth I seen at MakerFaire. They were printing circuits like that in 2 passes and the reaction between both passes was creating the conductivity. They could print that on pretty much any type of base. They had some printed on a piece of paper.

I'll have to find that flyer somewhere at work...

 

[pm_dude 26]

http://www.cartesianco.com/