The Difference between FPC and PCB

What is FPC?

Many people in the PCB industry know that FPC is a type of PCB, also know as “flexible PCB”. FPC is made of flexible substrates such as polyimide or polyester film. It has the advantages of high wiring density, light weight, thin thickness and high flexibility. It can withstand millions of times of dynamic bending without damaging the wires, and can be moved and retracted arbitrarily according to the requirements of the space layout to realize three-dimensional assembly, achieving the effect of component assembly and wire connection integration. It has advantages unmatched by other types of circuit boards.

Application of FPC: 

Mobile phone: The flexible circuit board is light in weight and thin in thickness, which can effectively save the volume of the product and easily connect the battery, microphone and buttons.

Computer and LCD screen: Utilizing the integrated circuit configuration of the flexible circuit board and the advantages of thin thickness, the digital signal is converted into a picture and presented through the LCD screen;

CD Walkman: The flexible circuit board’s three-dimensional space assembly characteristics and thin advantage make the larger CD Walkman a good companion to carry around;

Disk Drive: Whether hard disk or floppy disk, it is very dependent on FPC’s high softness and ultra-thin thickness to complete fast reading of data, whether it is PC or NOTEBOOK;

What is PCB?

PCB, also called Printed Circuit Board, referred to as printed board. Is one of the important parts of the electronics industry. Almost all electronics, military weapon systems, as long as there are electronic components such as integrated circuits, the electrical interconnection between them requires the use of printed circuit boards. In the research of larger electronic products, the products, the most basic success factor is the design, documentation, and manufacturing of the printed circuit board of the product.

The role of PCB

After the electronic equipment adopts printed circuit board, due to the consistency of similar printed circuit boards, manual wiring errors are avoided, so that automatic insertion or placement of electronic components, automatic soldering, and automatic detection can be achieved, and ensuring the quality of electronic equipment. Not only improves labor productivity, reduces costs, and facilitates maintenance.

In conclusion: PCB is a collective name for all circuit boards, and FPC is one of them. PCB usually uses FR4 as the substrate, which is called rigid board and cannot be bent. 

It is usually used in places that do not need to be bend and have high hardness, such as computer motherboards and mobile phone motherboards, etc. FPC generally uses PI as the substrate, which is a flexible material that can be bent and flexed arbitrarily, and has the advantages of light weight and thin thickness. It is generally applied to the parts that need to be repeatedly flexed and connected with some small parts, such as the folded part of a flip phone flip, and the part where the printer is connected to the print head. Both have different application areas and have their own advantages.