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Manufacture ?
I've been trying to find someone to do a one off custom board on PET plastic. I've asked everywhere. We've played (my son and I) but getting copper adhering to the PET is not the easiest thing to do, then finding chemicals which etch the copper but don't affect the plastic, an expensive project so far to fix a set of race car scales belonging to a friend.
We even bought the copper clad polyimide sheeting, far from cheap (came in from New York) but finding information on etching and processing is far from easy (or was, we haven't looked in ages). Then throw in issues trying to get the track printed out on transparencies, nothing worked as it should (I was formerly an electronics engineer (forgotten too much now)) we needed to overlay several copies to get the necessary darkness in the print but the transparencies were stretching with heat from the laser printer and every track was a different size/width.
Trying to expose the thing under UV lights also became an issue because we needed to diffuse the IR lights we have for it. I ended up going for a nice frosted glass sheet (I may have frosted myself with valve grinding paste, I don't remember) but weren't getting great results. A quick search revealed glass blocks UV light, that's one less problem after we find a suitable replacement.
The circuit board we need to replicate (with permission of the OEM company owners) needs to be flexible and we have to nickel coat the connectors on the end of an extended flexible cable on the board.
No one in Australia could help when I first started researching this project, luckily the owner sold his race car and doesn't need it in a hurry. Even getting the polyimide was near impossible in Australia until after several emails an electronics company in Sydney started bringing it in on order form their parent company in the U.S.A.
I HATE electronics, give me a welder, dead computer (I know, it falls into electronics but I mastered hardware 30+ years ago) or a blown engine any day!
WOW, PCBWay do flexible stuff too, even on PET as per the original PCB, I'll have to check circuit dimensions and hit them for a quote, so much easier than my doing it. I'll lose on the chemicals I purchased and don't play much but my son will eventually use it for other PCBs hopefully.
I searched the internet to find such a place some time back and no one was doing custom flexible boards.
EDIT:
Apparently I was incorrect, my son had found sites overseas to do flexible circuits but they expected a minimum order of 5 units and the cost was outlandish. However the company Bojan listed will do just the one board at around $150. It saves my son and I a lot of headaches.
Last edited by Leo.G; 11-07-2024 at 11:03 AM.
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