Feature Misalignment
Lateral displacement of conductor patterns during the board lamination phase leads to registration errors between layers. The occurrence of trace swimming happens when the epoxy resin liquifies and flows with enough velocity to push small copper features from their coordinates. This shift is common in designs with very thin traces on inner layers surrounded by large open resin-rich zones.
It causes drill bit misalignments where the plated hole fails to land squarely inside the target pad.
Movement Mechanism
High viscosity flow during the press sequence generates drag on the vertical walls of the etched copper tracks. When trace swimming occurs, the physical bond between the copper and the substrate is temporarily weakened by the heat before the final hardening happens. This allows the feature to drift several microns away from its original position.
Fabricators try to control this by using low-flow prepreg materials or by including non-functional copper dots to break up the large paths of moving resin. They also use automated optical alignment cameras to adjust the drilling programs based on the actual measured location of target features after the press cycle finishes.
Design Consequence
Significant movement leads to internal shorts if the drifting copper pushes too close to an adjacent signal through-hole. Controlling the thermal ramp rate in the press is the primary defense against this type of deformation.