An environmental and economic comparison of additive and subtractive approaches for printed wiring board fabrication

This paper describes a fully additive process using photoimagable dielectric dry film with either electroless copper or conductive ink interconnect for construction of fine-line printed wiring boards (PWBs). Performance, cost, and environmental impact (energy, waste, and water) for the fully additive materials and processes are compared to those for conventional fabrication. Issues surrounding insertion into a production facility are discussed and a demonstration test vehicle is described. A trade-off analysis software tool is used to generate actual cost and waste data for a six-layer panel and results are presented.