Several questions about design and fabrication of metal base PCBs.

Raphael Gimenez asked Jan 18,2025
0

All questions are with respect to design and fabricating a multilayer, single-sided, aluminum metal base PCB. See attached screenshot for an example of what I want to order.


  1. What layer numbers exactly are defined when selecting a Finished Copper weight in PCBWay quote form? Put another way, does a multilayer metal base PCB have 1 outer layer or 2 outer layers? My assumption is the answer is 1.
  2. What are the design/fabrication considerations for Inner Layer weight greater than 1oz?
  3. Can the aluminum metal base still be drilled/slotted and insulated even though copper will not be traversing into the hole (non-plated aluminum hole)? This is to make room for non-PCB parts.
  4. If answer to #3 is yes, how to define and order such a thing? How to define metal base hole/cutout vs copper/dielectric hole/cutout so that PCBway can reliably fabricate? Can they be defined in Altium PCB designer / gerbers in addition to PDF instructions or can they only be defined in PDF instructions?


Thanks in advance for any insight :)

Screenshot 2025-01-17 at 08.54.52.png
Download
  • Your Answer(1)
Upload photo
You can only upload 5 files in total. Each file cannot exceed 2MB. Supports JPG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
0 / 10000
  • 0

    Thank you for your question, the reply is as follows:
    1. The finished copper thickness is not defined by the number of layers, but by the copper thickness of the signal layers. For multi-layer metal substrates, it depends on whether the core is sandwiched or the metal base is at the bottom. If the metal base is at the bottom, there is only one outer layer; if it is sandwiching, there are two outer layers.
    2. For inner copper thicknesses greater than 1oz, the specifications are the same as for FR4.
    3. For slots in the metal base, they can be made using controlled depth slots.
    4. It is recommended to mark this in the Gerber files.

    Jan 20,20250 Comments
    Reply
Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.
List of Questions
pause
  • Weekly Leaderboard
Ranking Name Answers
1 PCBWay Team 4
2 Engineer 1
3 Julian E 1
4 Aram Novikov 1