Heavy Copper PCBs are printed circuit boards with 3 or more ounces of finished copper in the inner and/or outer layers.
How Are Heavy Copper PCBs Made?
Amitron utilizes a unique process referred to as “Laminated Deposition”. This combination of processes allows extreme copper thickness requirements to become very practical and cost effective. The process utilizes heavy base copper that delivers consistent and reliable high power circuits when placed in our plating and etching systems, allowing us to produce well-defined track edges, finer lines, and finer spaces.
Benefits of Heavy Copper PCBs
- Elimination of complex wired buss configurations
- Increased current carrying capacity
- Increased endurance to thermal strains
- Optimized use of exotic high temperature materials with lower probability of circuit failure
- Ability to incorporate multiple copper weights on the same layer of circuitry (layer count reduction)
- Added copper plating in the heat vias (thermal resistance reduction)
- Selective areas plated with heavy copper can function as a heat sink or interface to cold plate (built-in heat sinks)
- Integration of high-current circuits and control circuits on a single PCB
Applications of Heavy Copper PCBs
Demand for heavy copper-clad circuits in automotive, computer, industrial controls, and military is growing very fast. More than 80% of the existing PCB manufacturers are limited or not capable of producing reliable heavy copper printed circuit boards.
- Solar power converters
- Safety and signal systems
- Renewable energies and storage pumping plants
- Torque controls
- High power rectifiers
- Overload relays
- Power converters for railway systems
- Power line monitors
- Traction converters for rail applications
- UPS systems
- Electric vehicle charging (commercial and industrial)
- Protection relays
- Excitation systems for power regulators
- Position control systems
- Power grid switching systems
- HVAC systems
- Energy storage and power grid back up
- Nuclear power applications
- Line reactors
- Hydro-electric plants
- Surge protectors
- Fuse blocks
- Welding Equipment
- Weapons control systems
- Radar systems
The driver behind the demand of copper PCBs is ever increasing power, performance, and cost requirements. Known in the industry as the PCB thermal management experts, Amitron has been manufacturing PCBs with heavy copper plating since 1994 and we are capable of producing 20 plus ounces of finished copper and reliably spray coat a protective and consistent solder mask with imaged nomenclature. An extreme copper circuit could utilize 6 oz. in the hole walls and 20 oz. surface copper.
