Polar adds Speedflex flex-rigid PCB capability to Speedstack layer stackup design system

GUERNSEY, Channel Islands: Polar Instruments has added a new flex-rigid PCB design option to Speedstack, the industry’s best-selling PCB layer stackup design system.

The addition of Speedflex flex-rigid design to Speedstack allows PCB fabricators and OEM designers to create and accurately document PCB stackups, combining rigid and flex-rigid PCBs, and to reduce manufacturing costs through fast evaluation of a wide range of alternative materials and suppliers.

Speedflex provides designers with an ultra fast process which can build flex-rigid PCB stacks in minutes, document drills, display the stacks as a two or three-dimensional image, and add controlled impedance, with goal-seeking, to complete the design.

Unlike alternative systems, Speedstack does not limit the number of layers that can be added, or the number of cross-sections that can be created and compared, including coverlays, adhesives, and no-flow prepreg layers, allowing more flexibility to fine tune the stack design for optimum cost and performance.

The completed stack is documented automatically and can be exported in industry standard file formats. This eliminates manual errors and ensures that the PCB specifications are communicated clearly and consistently to every company and individual in the design and fabrication process. Whilst error-free documentation tightens control over the finished board,

Speedflex also provides the flexibility for fabricators to safely reduce manufacturing costs. With extensive libraries of materials, suppliers, costs and lead-times, Speedflex can show the impact that changing materials or suppliers will have on the cost, lead-time and electrical specifications of the finished board.

This dramatically reduces the time taken to manually calculate the impact of each slight change to the board and provides more opportunities to find the most cost effective materials and suppliers within the electrical specifications of the finished board.

Polar Instruments’ Sales & Marketing director, Martyn Gaudion, explains: “We believe that the combination of Speedflex and Speedstack provides the industry with its most comprehensive system for PCB layer stackup design.

"By combining both rigid and flex-rigid PCBs in an easy-to-use graphical system, Speedflex and Speedstack deliver the flexibility to quickly reduce manufacturing costs, or avoid lead-time delays, without compromising the electrical performance or manufacturing yield of the finished PCB."