Ep.17: Bare PCB Materials w/ Dave Wilcox

In this episode Dave Wilcox, CAM engineer at CircuitHub, joins us again to educate us on bare printed circuit board materials....think prepreg, laminate etc.

Show Notes:
-FR4 is the most common, widely available PCB material. It is a woven glass cloth filled with epoxy resin the is bonded together to form sheets of prepreg and laminate
-If a circuit board were a sandwich, the laminate is the bread and the prepreg is the filling.
-We discuss differences in FR4 used for lead vs lead free process.
-What does high TG and the different TG ratings mean?
-We briefly touch on some more exotic materials.
-The laminate comes in different thicknesses laminated with different copper weights that are used to build different stackups.
-Copper foil is used on the outside and also come in different weights.
-What does is mean to be UL approved and how to PCB fabs get UL approval?
-Sometimes more sheets of prepreg are used to get greater resin content.
-How do the different materials arrive at the PCB fab?
-Pet peeves - the news and printers.