Where components are attached or where the flexible circuit board is to be bent
as it attaches to non-flexing circuits, stiffeners are included.This prevents damage
to both the connections and the Flex PCB.
Flexible PCBs, by their nature, are made to odd shapes; they aren’t a convenient
rectangle. After the Flex PCB is manufactured,it has to be routed, or skived, to
shape it to fit. To make sure the edges of the circuit traces are not going to be
damaged in the process of the routing, care must be taken in the layout and design
stages to keep the circuit traces back from the edge.
When there will be continuous or dynamic flexing of the circuit material, special
considerations are needed. On multi-layered Flex PCBs, this includes taking into
account the number of layers while making sure the conductors will not be fatigued while
the PCB is flexed.