EasyEDA Flex PCB Design User Guide

FPC design is similar to rigid board design, but FPCs are more flexible, making them challenging to assemble and solder. To address this, it's essential to add stiffeners in specific areas. However, most major EDA software lacks a dedicated stiffener layer, leading to varied design approaches, with some using CAD for stiffener design, others using images, and some marking in Gerber files. This can lead to errors or omissions by factory engineers, rendering the board unusable. To solve this industry pain point, EasyEDA Professional supports FPC stiffener design, allowing direct placement of stiffeners where needed without separate CAD or Gerber annotations, thus significantly improving design efficiency. Instructions for use are as follows:

In the PCB page's top menu, open the Place menu to find the FPC stiffener option.

If the project was set up as a regular rigid PCB, the layer manager will automatically switch the PCB type to FPC and add two dedicated stiffener layers for generating Gerber production files.

We offer three quick placement methods for ease of use.

You can also create a stiffener board by importing a DXF drawing and using the right-click menu.

After placement, select the stiffener board and set its material (PI, steel, 3M double-sided tape, electromagnetic shielding film), thickness/model in the properties panel. This way, the engineering team can automatically calculate pricing and production based on your settings.

Holes and slots can be added in stiffeners just like in regular rigid PCBs.

Once the stiffener placement is completed, you can run DRC and then one-click order or export Gerber files. The stiffener information will automatically be added to the Gerber files, and you can place an order for the FPC on the JLCPCB official website.

The output Gerber files are as follows:

An example stiffener layer Gerber pattern is as follows:

FPC Ordering Process

1. After completing the FPC design with stiffener, export Gerber files or use the one-click order from the menu.

2. On the order page, select the board material type as Flex.

3. After filling in other parameters, submit the order. The exported Gerber file pack will contain the necessary stiffener parameters.