There’s a slight lull in the Office, so this is just a filler post to briefly touch on the thin 0.8mm PCBs.
More than a decade ago, when I was scouring locally for someone to make printed circuit boards (aka PCBs), most companies would only produce them with the standard thickness of 1.6mm. They are quite expensive due to the obscene MOQ but I’ll talk about that some other time. And not only that, they could only accept ‘proper’ PCB files, namely from the ones like Altium or even Proteus, as long as they are able to produce GERBER files.
THICC
For a normal electronic application or project, the PCB is fine. But once I insert them into scale models, where real estate is a premium, it was quite apparent that the board was too thick. Because of that, I would have to resort to some space saving endeavours such as converting more components into their SMD equivalent or even place the board elsewhere and use more wiring just to reclaim as much space as possible.
JLCPCB
Enter JLCPCB from China. This is a PCB Manufacturing company which to me, is Godsend. I can’t remember how I found them but I do know that it was during the time I was frustrated with the local offerings and the CAD software compatibility. JLCPCB was offering 5 prototype PCBs for USD2.00 and they also accept (pre-AutoCAD) EaglePCB files!
As the Company ‘grew’ it offered even more prototyping choices from the Colours of the PCB, to SMT stencils and more importantly, its thickness. There are other options but this would mean foregoing the USD2.00 offer. And through trial & error (plus some RTFM), I learned a lot from them too. For example, they showed me how to convert EaglePCB files into the industry standard GERBER format.
Of course, if you choose something like aluminum as your base material, the pricing would change to reflect that choice.
THE 0.8mm FR4
At 1/35, the 0.8mm thickness becomes 5.6cm at 1:1
At 1/24, the 0.8mm thickness becomes 3.84cm at 1:1
At 1/350, the 0.8mm thickness becomes 56cm at 1:1
Just for fun, I did some rough calculation on how thick the 1.6mm PCB at various scales can become when it is scaled back to 1:1. And with the 0.8mm PCB, the thickness is half of that.
Logically, the 0.8mm thick PCB already saves space, is lighter, has better heat dissipation, more component count and more. In scale model perspective, the recovered 0.8mm
Logically, when designing with the 0.8mm PCB, the benefits such as weight reduction, increased heat dissipation, higher component count and so on is already there. But because I am using them in scale models, most of the advantages are not always noticeable. Anyway, the recovered 0.8mm made a lot of difference. But for me, since my designs are already compact, I think it’s much quicker on the reflow soldering process.
And lastly, yeah, I just love 0.8mm…
