Technical Library | 2013-07-03 10:31:54.0
It has been demonstrated in numerous pieces of work that stencil printing, one of the most complex PCB assembly processes, is one of the largest contributors to defects (Revelino et el). This complexity extends to prototype builds where a small number of boards need to be assembled quickly and reliably. Stencil printing is becoming increasingly challenging as packages shrink in size, increase in lead count and require closer lead spacing (finer pitch). Prototype SMT assembly can be further divided between industrial and commercial work and the DIYer, hobbyist or researcher groups. This second group is highly price sensitive when it comes to the materials used for the board assembly as their funds are sourced from personal or research monies as opposed to company funds. This has led to development of a lower cost SMT printing stencil made from plastic film as opposed to the more traditional stainless steel stencil used by industrial and commercial users.This study compares the performance of these two traditional materials and their respective impact on solder paste printing including efficiency and print quality.
Technical Library | 2015-12-14 13:40:04.0
A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is a software program that manages and monitors production work in a factory. The MES controls and monitors all manufacturing data in real time, so there is no guesswork as to the status of any given job, machine, operator, etc. The focus is on short-interval scheduling (shift or day) with an emphasis on optimizing the distribution of work orders. Larger manufacturers have employed MES’s for years but many small to medium sized enterprises (SME’s) have yet to adopt such systems. The benefits of using an MES are many. Looking forward, I predict that even the smallest manufacturing companies will employ MES systems in the future.
Technical Library | 2013-01-24 19:16:35.0
The electronics industry has mainly adopted the higher melting point Sn3Ag0.5Cu solder alloys for lead-free reflow soldering applications. For applications where temperature sensitive components and boards are used this has created a need to develop low melting point lead-free alloy solder pastes. Tin-bismuth and tin-bismuth-silver containing alloys were used to address the temperature issue with development done on Sn58Bi, Sn57.6Bi0.4Ag, Sn57Bi1Ag lead-free solder alloy pastes. Investigations included paste printing studies, reflow and wetting analysis on different substrates and board surface finishes and head-in-pillow paste performance in addition to paste-in-hole reflow tests. Voiding was also investigated on tin-bismuth and tin-bismuth-silver versus Sn3Ag0.5Cu soldered QFN/MLF/BTC components. Mechanical bond strength testing was also done comparing Sn58Bi, Sn37Pb and Sn3Ag0.5Cu soldered components. The results of the work are reported.
Technical Library | 2019-08-07 22:56:45.0
The requirement to reconsider traditional soldering methods is becoming more relevant as the demand for bottom terminated components (QFN/BTC) increases. Thermal pads under said components are designed to enhance the thermal and electrical performance of the component and ultimately allow the component to run more efficiently. Additionally, low voiding is important in decreasing the current path of the circuit to maximize high speed and RF performances. The demand to develop smaller, more reliable, packages has seen voiding requirements decrease below 15 percent and in some instances, below 10 percent.Earlier work has demonstrated the use of micro-fluxed solder preforms as a mechanism to reduce voiding. The current work builds upon these results to focus on developing an engineered approach to void reduction in leadless components (QFN) through increasing understanding of how processing parameters and a use of custom designed micro-fluxed preforms interact. Leveraging the use of a micro-fluxed solder preform in conjunction with low voiding solder paste, stencil design, and application knowhow are critical factors in determining voiding in QFN packages. The study presented seeks to understand the vectors that can contribute to voiding such as PCB pad finish, reflow profile, reflow atmosphere, via configuration, and ultimately solder design.A collaboration between three companies consisting of solder materials supplier, a power semiconductor supplier, and an electronic assembly manufacturer worked together for an in-depth study into the effectiveness of solder preforms at reducing voiding under some of the most prevalent bottom terminated components packages. The effects of factors such as thermal pad size, finish on PCB, preform types, stencil design, reflow profile and atmosphere, have been evaluated using lead-free SAC305 low voiding solder paste and micro-fluxed preforms. Design and manufacturing rules developed from this work will be discussed.
Technical Library | 2016-01-12 11:05:28.0
The electronic industry is currently very interested in low temperature soldering processes such as using Sn/Bi alloy to improve process yield, eliminate the head-in-pillow effect, and enhance rework yield. However, Sn/Bi alloy is not strong enough to replace lead-free (SAC) and eutectic Sn/Pb alloys in most applications. In order to improve the strength of Sn/Bi solder joints, enhance mechanical performance, and improve reliability properties such as thermal cycling performance of soldered electronic devices, YINCAE has developed a low temperature solder joint encapsulant for Sn/Bi soldering applications. This low temperature solder joint encapsulant can be dipped, dispensed, or printed. After reflow with Sn/Bi solder paste or alloy, solder joint encapsulant encapsulates the solder joint. As a result, the strength of solder joints is enhanced by several times, and thermal cycling performance is significantly improved. All details will be discussed in this paper.
Technical Library | 2018-03-28 14:54:36.0
Six decades of legacy experience makes the specification and production of screens and masks to produce repeatable precision results mostly an exercise in matching engineering needs with known ink and substrate performance to specify screen and stencil characteristics. New types of functional and electronic devices, flex circuits and medical sensors, industrial printing, ever finer circuit pitch, downstream additive manufacturing processes coupled with new substrates and inks that are not optimized for the rheological, mechanical and chemical characteristics for the screen printing process are becoming a customer driven norm. Many of these materials do not work within legacy screen making, curing or press set-up parameters. Many new materials and end uses require new screen specifications.This case study presents a DOE based method to pre-test new materials to categorize ink and substrate rheology, compatibility and printed feature requirement to allow more accurate screen recipes and on-press setting expectations before the project enters the production environment where time and materials are most costly and on-press adjustment methods may be constrained by locked, documented or regulatory processes, equipment limitations and employee experience.
Technical Library | 2021-11-22 20:44:44.0
Many automated optical inspection (AOI) companies use supervised object detection networks to inspect items, a technique which expends tremendous time and energy to mark defectives. Therefore, we propose an AOI system which uses an unsupervised learning network as the base algorithm to simultaneously generate anomaly alerts and reduce labeling costs. This AOI system works by deploying the GANomaly neural network and the supervised network to the manufacturing system. To improve the ability to distinguish anomaly items from normal items in industry and enhance the overall performance of the manufacturing process, the system uses the structural similarity index (SSIM) as part of the loss function as well as the scoring parameters. Thus, the proposed system will achieve the requirements of smart factories in the future (Industry 4.0).
Technical Library | 2023-05-02 19:06:43.0
As 0402 has become a common package for printed circuit board (PCB) assembly, research and development on mounting 0201 components is emerging as an important topic in the field of surface mount technology for PWB miniaturization. In this study, a test vehicle for 0201 packages was designed to investigate board design and assembly issues. Design of Experiment (DOE) was utilized, using the test vehicle, to explore the influence of key parameters in pad design, printing, pick-andplace, and reflow on the assembly process. These key parameters include printing parameters, mounting height or placement pressure, reflow ramping rate, soak time and peak temperature. The pad designs consist of rectangular pad shape, round pad shape and home-based pad shape. For each pad design, several different aperture openings on the stencil were included. The performance parameters from this experiment include solder paste height, solder paste volume and the number of post-reflow defects. By analyzing the DOE results, optimized pad designs and assembly process parameters were determined.
Technical Library | 2012-12-20 14:36:09.0
The increased function of personal electronic devices, such as mobile phones and personal music devices, has driven the need for smaller and smaller active and passive components. This trend toward miniaturization, occurring at the same time as the conversion to RoHS-compliant lead-free assembly, has been a considerable challenge to the electronics assembly industry. The main reason for this is the higher reflow process temperatures required for Pb-free assembly. These higher temperatures can thermally damage the PCB and the components. In addition, the higher reflow temperatures can negatively affect the solder joint quality, especially when coupled with the smaller paste deposits required for these smaller components. If additional thermal processing is required, the risk increases even more. First Published at SMTA's International Conference on Soldering and Reliability in Toronto, May 2011
Technical Library | 2018-09-05 21:41:30.0
In recent years, a growing number of electronic devices are being incorporated into automotive and other high reliability end products where the challenge is to make these devices more reliable. The package size of the devices is largely driven by the consumer industry with their sizes getting smaller making it harder to assemble and be reliable at the same time. For automotive and other high reliability electronics product, it is of the utmost priority to secure high reliability because it directly involves human life and safety. Challenges include selecting an appropriate solder alloy and having good reliability of the solder paste flux.
