There’s no getting around the importance of saving weight and space when designing for the automotive market. There’s also no getting around the fact that traditional PCBs are flat, rigid and end up adding to the weight of your overall design, particularly when it comes to designing with curves.
Weight issue aside, when it comes to designing with curves, traditional PCBs throw up design barriers. Flat and rigid electronics don’t go hand in hand with curved design. Where flat electronics are used and the end-application design is curved, the usual method is to place the electronics in a large square housing which is typically placed some distance from the curve itself but this takes up valuable space and adds to the weight of the end application. Take a headlight as an example of this, most modern cars have headlights which follow the contours of the car’s body. To achieve this, the PCB is housed far back from the surface of the lamp, in order to effectively place the LEDs in a curved shape. However, using this takes up invaluable space, height and weight and makes curved design harder to achieve.
In2tec offer a way around this.
With our patented complex curve technology, bulky housings for electronics can be a thing of the past. We can print the circuit and components on a single plane, directly onto the surface of your product. This unique technology means your automotive electronics could be much lighter and take up less space. Not only that, but we can form the conductive circuit to the shape of the end product, creating a thinner, smaller and lighter product which isn’t held back by flat and rigid circuitry. Our proprietary complex modelling software provides forecasted circuit layouts to create the exact electrical and physical properties your design requires.
Complex curve technology can also break down design barriers in designing automotive interfaces. In2sense 3D is the world’s first complex curved, smartphone-style interface panel. It uses complex curve and touch sense technology to create an interface with a high tech look which deviates from the current planar model. Not only that, but In2sense 3D has an extremely low surface height as the illumination, SMT components, processor and touch sensor are printed onto a single complex curved plane.
This advanced technology was developed through our 15 years of experience in flexible and printed electronics and extensive materials analysis. Investment into our in-house R&D department has resulted in this unique offering which makes curved design much easier to achieve without adding weight to the end product. To find out what you could achieve with complex curve, get in touch with [email protected].
