Every day we read or hear about how a healthy life is about balance.  There are only two things my dad critiques me about when it comes to my health: “sit up straight and stretch more”.  I find that amusingly ironic.  The same desires my dad has for me have made their way into the PCB Industry.  As designers have sought to develop longer lasting and more complex electronics, circuit boards have been forced into a regimen of balancing traditional rigidity with the ability to bend, twist, and essentially be mutilated to fit within electronic devices which are losing more weight every day.  Take a look at the circuits embedded within a contact lens, or the super flexible silicon wrapped circuits designed by engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Read Mark Pascua’s blog post about the silicon circuits and watch the short video.

click the picture to read more about the contact lenses

Below is a short description of what Flex Circuits are, pulled from Cirexx International’s Corporate website.

Flex Circuits are thin, lightweight, flexible, and durable. They can be designed to meet a wide range of temperature and environmental extremes. Flex Circuits are excellent for designs with fine line traces and high-density circuitry, and are more suited for dynamic applications and vibration conditions than are conventional printed wiring boards.

Flexible Circuits are built to bend, fold, twist, and wrap in extremely tight areas. Flex Circuits benefit designers faced with space restrictions. Cirexx has designed and fabricated Flex Circuits and Flex Cables with high density, lightweight, redundant circuitry for satellites and avionic instruments, advanced scientific sensors, flexible heating elements, devices and sensors, medical equipment and robotics, security devices and controls.