what is flexible printed circuit board
A flexible printed circuit board (FPC or FPCB) is a printed circuit board having a base material composed of polyester resin or polyimide resin. The flexible printed circuit board can be variously bent and folded according to the needs of any particular application. The basic portion of a flexible printed circuit board is a film, which is used to support circuits composed of copper pieces. The flexible printed circuit board has properties of lightness, soft, thinness, smallness, ductility, flexibility and high wiring density. Accordingly, the flexible printed circuit board offers design freedom in electronic equipment, and particularly, saves an amount of a wasted space, thereby downsizing the equipment. The flexible printed circuit board is therefore typically applied in tiny products, such as notebook, mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) and information appliance (IA). For example, the flexible printed circuit board can be used as a connection between a liquid crystal display (LCD), a hard disk driver (HDD) or a compact disc read only memory driver (CD-ROM) to a motherboard. In electronic apparatuses having movable units, such as printers, a flexible printed circuit is used as a wiring member for electrically connecting a movable unit and a fixed unit. Even in electronic apparatuses not having movable units, such as liquid crystal displays (LCD) and cameras, a flexible printed circuit is used in order to mount a wiring member in a narrow space. A typical flexible printed circuit board has a connecting part which is to be attached to a connector and which is integrally provided on, for example, an edge of the flexible printed circuit board so as to further save space. Electrical connectors for FFC are widely used in electronic devices such as mobile telephones, keyboards, hard disk drives and fax machines etc. A typical FPC connector includes an insulating housing, contact elements received in the housing, an actuator ratatably mounted onto the housing and/or inserted into the housing, for pressing an FPC against the contact elements.
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