Boards Built For Heat Vibration And Long Service Life
Automotive electronics work inside a fixed thermal and mechanical budget. Boards see temperature cycling, vibration and a service life measured in years, and the parts that fail first are almost always thermal or mechanical rather than electrical.
What Actually Fails In Automotive Electronics
Four failure modes specific to this sector, and the published figure that each one is controlled by.
Thermal budget
Aluminium boards with a measured 1 °C/W laminate thermal resistance and a 125 °C maximum working temperature take the heat out of driver stages.
Vibration
Connector anchor holes and terminal pads carry mechanical load. A 0.025 mm plated barrel wall is what keeps the joint together.
Temperature cycling
Thermal shock testing on our aluminium laminate shows no bubble and no delamination after 2 minutes at 260 and 288 °C.
Packaging shape
Housings are not rectangular. Profiled outlines are CNC routed to ±0.2 mm on aluminium and ±0.10 mm on rigid FR4.
Boards We Build For This Sector
Most automotive enquiries land on the aluminium range for driver and lighting stages, with rigid FR4 for the control section and flexible circuits where a harness would fatigue.
Single Sided Aluminium Board With OSP For Motor And Driver Circuits
Double Sided Aluminium Board For Round Driver Modules
Assembled Power Converter With Toroidal Inductor And LED Output Board
Double Sided FR4 Board With Lead Free HASL
Single Layer Flex Circuit With Branched Arms And ZIF Tail
Four Ways To Buy For A Automotive Electronics Programme
Prototyping, design support, turnkey assembly and one stop supply across all three substrate families.
Fast Turn Prototyping
Get The First Boards Back Before The Design Goes Cold
SolutionPCB Design Support
Design Review Against Real Process Limits
SolutionTurnkey PCBA Assembly
Bare Board And Assembly Quoted As One Finished Unit
SolutionOne Stop Supply
One Supplier For Rigid Aluminium Flex And Assembly
An Example From This Sector
Boards from the production catalogue and the problem each had to solve. Customer names and volumes are confidential.
Guides For Automotive Electronics Buyers
Written for the engineering and purchasing decisions this sector runs into.
Layer count is the single decision that most affects the price and the electrical behaviour of a board. This guide sets ...
Three surface finishes cover almost every board we build. Choosing between them is not a quality decision, it is a fitne...
When a board runs hot the usual fixes are a bigger heatsink or a bigger enclosure. A metal core board attacks the proble...
Automotive Electronics Questions
What is the maximum working temperature of your aluminium boards?
125 degrees Celsius, published in our aluminium capacity table.
Have the laminates been thermal shock tested?
Yes. Testing to GB/T4722 clause 17 at 260 and 288 degrees Celsius for 2 minutes shows no bubble and no delamination.
Can you build boards to an automotive quality standard?
Tell us the standard you are working to and we will confirm what the plant currently supports before quoting.
Send Us A Automotive Electronics Board To Price
Gerber or ODB++ with the layer count, thickness, copper weight, surface finish and quantity. Add the bill of materials if you want the board assembled as well.