The flat wire is small in size and light in weight. The original design of the flat wire board is to replace the larger harness wire. In the current cutting-edge electronic device assembly board, cable layout is usually the only solution to meet the requirements of miniaturization and mobility. The flat wire (sometimes referred to as flexible printed circuit) is a copper circuit or printed polymer thick film circuit etched on the polymer substrate. For thin and light devices with compact and complex structure, its design solutions include from single-sided conductive circuit to complex multi-layer three-dimensional assembly. The total weight and volume of the wire arrangement is 70% less than that of the traditional round wire harness method. The flat wire can also increase its strength by using reinforcing materials or lining plates to obtain additional mechanical stability.
·The flat cable can be moved, bent and twisted without damaging the wire, and can comply with different shapes and special packaging dimensions. Its only limitation is volume space. Because it can withstand millions of times of dynamic bending, the cable arrangement can be well applied to the internal connection system of continuous or regular movement and become a part of the final product function. Solder joints on rigid PCB will fail after hundreds of cycles due to thermal mechanical stress. Jenny, the product manager of EECX, said: "It is required that the electrical signal/power supply move, and some products with smaller shape factor/package size benefit from the flat cable."
·The flat cable has excellent electrical properties, dielectric properties and heat resistance. The CEO of LT Electronic said: "The lower dielectric constant allows the rapid transmission of electrical signals; the good thermal performance makes the components easy to cool down; the higher glass transition temperature or melting point makes the components operate well at higher temperatures."
·The flat wire has higher assembly reliability and quality. The flat cable reduces the hardware required for internal connection, such as solder joints, trunk lines, backplane lines and cables commonly used in traditional electronic packaging, so that the flat cable can provide higher assembly reliability and quality. Because the traditional internal hardware composed of complex multiple systems is prone to high component dislocation rate during assembly. Ping. Wu, the marketing manager of EECX Electronic Products Division, said: "The rigidity of the cable is low, and the volume is small. It is precisely because the volume of the cable board components is small, so the materials used are less." With the emergence of quality engineering, a flexible system with very thin thickness is designed to be assembled in only one way, thus eliminating many human errors usually associated with independent wiring engineering.