An FPCB (flexible printed circuit board) is a unique type of electrical circuit. As its name suggests, it is flexible. You can bend and shape them into your desired form.
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FPCBs are composed of a thin film or foil made of polyester acting as the substrate material. They are lightweight and heat-resistant, ideal for providing the interconnections in a circuit.
FPCBs have many applications, from automobiles and aviation to consumer electronics and LEDs. Due to their flexibility, their application continues to increase.
LED strips are essentially interconnected circuit boards. SMD LEDs and other components mount onto the flexible circuit boards using Surface Mount Technology (SMT). In other words, FPCBs act as the substrate where manufacturers mount the LED chips.
Apart from acting as its structure, another main function of circuit boards is Heat dissipation.
3.1 Single Layer PCB
Single-layer boards consist of a substrate layer and a conductive layer. A solder mask and silkscreen protect these layers. It doesn’t have circuits on its backside.
They have a thin structure, being only around 1-oz in thickness. You’ll feel remarkably lightweight when holding them.
3.2 Double Layer PCB
Compared to a single-layer PCB, the double-layer PCB has two copper layers that makes it thicker and heavier, as it has a conductive layer on both sides.
They’re also more durable as the circuit board can withstand higher currents, and the heat dissipation is better.
In current lighting market, we can find that both single-layer PCB and double-layer PCB have been used for LED strip lights strips. Once you tear off the adhesive tape on the back of the LED strip, you can clearly see the difference between these two kinds of PCBs.
Some manufacturers of led strip light choose single-layer PCB to save the cost. Although the double-layer PCB is more expensive, the LED tapes made by it have higher lumens and better heat dissipation to significantly improve its stability and longer life. It is a necessary choice for the LED strips used in your “done-then-forget” lighting project.
Circuit board thickness is measured in copper ounces (oz.). It is the amount of copper (in ounces) needed to attain a thickness of over one sq.
When it comes to electronic circuits, the copper choice is critical. Though a standard regulates the copper quality applied to electronic circuits, they still vary in thickness.
The copper thickness should be considered when shopping for an LED strip. If you intend to get high-powered ones, you’re going to need thicker copper 2-oz or 3-oz.
LED strips with higher copper thickness has the following advantages:
Hello,
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I want to create a pcb for a WordClock. The Clock is running and working. But I dont want to solder all the LEDs one by one. I wish i had a pcb with some custom format/size, eleven rows for 11 strips of 11 leds. Also a an easy level shifter from aliexpress should be connected. Maybe a power jack for the 5V power supply. My problem i dont find the right footprints, i dont know how to create the solder pads for the ws led strips nad search for some help. It would be great via Teams or Discord with some screensharing. I´m from germany and it would be great in german
Hope to find some help for a hour.
Best regards
Sascha
When I look at the WS in KiCad’s default libraries, then it already shows a default footprint, and it looks correct (or at least plausible). You should always verify this yourself if you actually want to use it.
Or do you want to cut a long led strip into short sections, and then put those sections on a PCB?
I would probably just glue the LED strips to a piece of plywood, or put them in a 3D printed frame and then just solder wires between them. It’s quick to do, and for a one-off the soldering is less work then creating a PCB.
But if you do want to make a PCB… Creating new footprints is not very difficult The user interface for the footprint editor is pretty consistent with the other editors in KiCad, but there is a bit of a learning curve. I’d say just start experimenting, try to read the manual or find some tutorials, and then ask here when you get stuck and have some specific questions about some detail.
I want a strip of 11 leds in row. 11 rows among themselves and ever row i had to solder. My goal is too get a pcd with the a wemos d1 mini a level shifter for the ws signal pin and a backplane pcd where I only had to solder the led 11 led strips iwth ever strip of 11 leds. The size and the position must be correct and my work will step down from 4,5 hours yesterday to maxmium of one hour. I have to create 4 more clocks and thats the reason why I want to create this pcb
At the moment there is a hotly debated discussion about forum rules going on behind the scenes. It started because of Johannes’s use of German while answering questions (even to people who do not understand German at all) while he asks questions in English when he wants help himself.
The consensus seems to be to allow non-english, especially for newcomers, or for people who have difficulty with translations, but to discourage non-english. Partially because it is a burden for moderators who have to check messages for spam. But also because use of different languages degrades the usability of this forum for users. From people just reading a forum topic and not understanding some of the answers, to search functions that do not work. You can expect some “official” guidelines about this to become available shortly (a few weeks).
Johannes has been receiving several PM’s and apparently did not see fit to react or change his behavior. I’m not sure about his exact status, but I think he got banned for 2 weeks because of it.
Why does this apply only to German people?
It is really not very difficult to learn to make custom footprints. The footprint editor has a very similar look and feel to the other programs in KiCad. I see it a lot on this forum that people are afraid of starting to design a footprint (or modify an existing one). There is indeed a bit of a learning curve, but it’s not too hard, and there are plenty of people (from all kinds of nationalities) that are willing to help with advise if you do get stuck.
There is also another simple option. These LED strips are not designed to be PCB mountable, and that makes designing a footprint, and soldering the led strip to the footprint a bit cumbersome. You can use simple standard single in line headers for the electrical connections, place them on a convenient place on the PCB, and then solder short wires between the LED strips and these headers.
Your English is plenty good enough to make yourself understandable on this forum, (but I do not know how much effort it costs you to read and interpret (translate?) the messages. Your English is better then My German, even though I’m a neighbor from the Netherlands.
I am thinking about taking this up myself (For a donation to KiCad). The most difficult (and time consuming part) will be the specifications of what you want made. (And indeed communcation is important here, and speaking the same language helps.)
But whoever does the job. It starts with setting up some detailed specifications of what the job is about. Getting this communication done is very likely more difficult then the project itself. Designing the PCB is probably just a few hours, but there is a significant risk that when you see the PCB, you will say “No, that is not what I had in mind, I want this and that changed”. And those things suck up many hours of time.
I think it is:
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