scope:

Introduction

''Very few users get deeply immersed in flexible circuit boards. It takes five to seven years working with it every day before you understand all the aspects of flexible circuit designs.'' - Mark Finstad, vice chair of the IPC D-11 Flexible Circuits Design Subcommittee

As Mark Finstad states, it can take five to seven years of working with flex printed boards every day to understand their complexity. Similarly, e-textiles can take years to fully grasp. Because the e-textiles industry is not fully developed, few people have experience making scalable, robust and reliable e-textiles at affordable costs for such a period of time. Forster Rohner and OhmaTex are examples of groups that have been focused on manufacturability and scalability for at least five years.

The framework in this paper has been developed through extensive research and testing. This includes teardowns, knitted circuits, stenciled circuits, plotted circuits and others. This white paper includes references to projects and products that support the conclusions drawn.