subject: Flex Circuits, Their Functioning And Applications [print this page] What are Flex Circuits? What are Flex Circuits?
The name is a short form for flexible circuitry where the arrangement of wiring is already printed on a board. Initially, these types of boards were used in military and defense applications to save time and to enable reuse of the circuits. The advantage of these boards is that they save a lot of time by connecting almost all electronic components during the manufacturing process. The other advantage is, since they are manufactured in factory, precision and accuracy of connections is very high compared to manually connected circuit boards. Another important advantage is their compact sizes and ability to fit in very small spaces. And last but not least, they can be designed exactly as per your requirements.
Sometimes, these flexible circuits are required to be moved at specific intervals of time. Flex Circuits can be built to be reliable for such millions of cycles and still give high performance.
How are they Manufactured?
In general, a flex circuit is made up of an insulating plastic film, a copper foil used as conductor and an adhesive. The adhesive can be selected from any of the polymers. This adhesive is used to bind the insulator and the conductor into a laminated circuit; hence it should be selected with great care.
Depending on the requirements, the factors to consider are strength of the adhesive, its resistance capacity to temperature, resistance to moisture etc. If the adhesive is not resistant enough to moisture, it may produce a defective flex circuit.
Applications
Few of the industries that use these heaters are mentioned below
Medical heaters or silicone heaters also use flexi circuits.
Silicone rubber heaters are made in such a way that they become moisture and chemical resistant. They are very thin and are flexible too. They are manufactured to meet the custom needs of various low and medium temperature applications. Flex circuits in these heaters can withstand shocks and vibrations.
Flexi Circuit Board heaters are typically used for precise heat output needs in a variety of applications. Existing designs can be modified or changed to fabricate Flexi board heaters to meet your specific needs. One more advantage is that the raw material being lightweight .heaters can be designed in any symmetrical/non-symmetrical shapes.
Heaters using these circuits are used in following medical equipments.
* Where hemodialysis is to be done
* In open heart surgery to keep the patients blood warm
* In breathalyzers
* To warm the hypodermic needles.
More Applications of Flex Circuits Include:
* In electronic and computer devices required to operate in extreme weather conditions
