Electronics > Manufacturing & Assembly
Aluminum/MCPCB suppliers?
samsonc:
Hey guys,
Anyone have personal experience with any MCPCB suppliers? I'm designing a board that really needs good thermal conductivity. I still have to do some thermal measurements, but the last board I ordered from a random Asian supplier (Sitopway) seemed to not /really/ be a proper, thermally conductive MCPCB. As far as I can tell, it's a thin layer of FR4 glued to an aluminum baseplate (if this is actually how some of the thermally conductive baseboards are, I'd like to know--I'd assumed it'd be something white and without fiberglass reinforcement, being ceramic filled). This particular supplier couldn't provide data on what baseboard material they even used or where it came from.
Thanks!
DerekG:
--- Quote from: samsonc on December 23, 2014, 09:55:49 pm ---I'm designing a board that really needs good thermal conductivity.
--- End quote ---
No experience with MCPCB, but if the supplier can't supply you with any definitive heat dissipating specifications, then you cannot rely on it.
Other options for better heat dissipation are:
1/ Specify 3oz copper instead of the usual 1oz;
2/ Open up the bottom layer tracks/bottom layer heat sink areas so that they are covered with solder during wave soldering;
3/ Open up the top layer solder mask & paste screen for tracks & heat sink areas so that these areas will be filled with solder paste. This will increase significantly the heat dissipation. Specify a 8 thou paste screen & if your board areas are quite large, consider a "grid arrangement" within the screen to prevent large bubbles forming during the infrared reflow process.
jmole:
--- Quote from: DerekG on December 23, 2014, 10:28:54 pm ---
--- Quote from: samsonc on December 23, 2014, 09:55:49 pm ---I'm designing a board that really needs good thermal conductivity.
--- End quote ---
2/ Open up the bottom layer tracks/bottom layer heat sink areas so that they are covered with solder during wave soldering;
--- End quote ---
Terrible idea if you're mounting the back of the board to a heatsink.
samsonc:
Sorry, this is a weird hybrid mechanical/electrical/thermal application and an MCPCB is necessary. Just wondering if anyone has experience with MCPCB suppliers. It was indeed a mistake to go with the first supplier, who didn't even have thermal specs, but it was worth the risk given how little they were charging for the board (I honestly don't feel bad that it wasn't great, and that remains to be seen anyway). Now I'm just looking for a supplier which anyone has good experiences with.
samsonc:
If anyone's curious, just for reference--the boards I got from Sitopway are half 1/2oz and half 1/3oz. This actually would've been useful for us (I don't know anyone who will put 1/3oz on MCPCB!) but my guess is they found some old scrap thin laminate material lying around and just pressed it with some prepreg onto Aluminum.
They were /really/ cheap though...
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version