solder paste measurement machine

Hi, yes may be 3d is slow but it gives you great results as it shows the height while 2d picture shows error when the paste in your machine appears to end i.e. when it see that the pad starts to appear. I don't know which company brand you prefer but compare your choice with others because speed is not only the thing, there are other things too. bye

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3d is good for initial verification that your screen printer and stencil is producing the desired paste height. 2D verification is more than sufficient during regular production.

That being said, your best bet for a 3D machine is to go cheap - buy a tabletop measurement system - since you'll be doing this only on a sampling basis. It adds NO VALUE whatsoever to do 3D inspection as part of in-line production.

If your screen printer does not have 2D capability, or if it's an older DEK where the 2D capability doesn't work, then buy the in-line machine but only do 2D inspection during regular production, and do the 3D on a sampling basis.

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Hi Dub J,

I have worked for a few companies that did 3D sampling and found the data they produce to be useless. In the real world they are slow, so that means you won't sample every board. Now if you're not sampling every board, and you start to run low on paste volume starts to deviate, you lost the whole reason you would even try to keep SPC data on such a process. That being said and prolly stepping on a few toes, I would go 2D. 2D is fast enough to put in line and you can check 100% of your product. You will find real defects there. With 3D we always had to come up with excuses each time it deviated from sigma. The funny part was the solder joints after reflow met IPC Class 3! But the 3D machine said something was wrong.

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Hello Firstly I�ll make a disclaimer that I do work for a paste inspection vendor. I will not mention which. I will leave the selection up to your due diligence. Paste inspection is the up and coming �fad� or required process depending on what your opinion is or precious experience is. A few of years ago 3D paste inspection was a slow and sometimes ineffectual process. This has changed some what now. There has been a lot of development from many manufacturers and improvement in the abilities of these machines.

Typically 3D paste inspection was difficult and involved long programming and debug. The current state of 3D inline paste inspection is that several vendors sell systems. Which will not be the gate in your line and for the most part will be faster than most system in your line. Currently 3D SPI is fast enough to keep up with the pace on most production lines. Which then leaves you with the decision on which machines fits your process better.

Sampling 3D paste height can give you some basic information on your process. But you must be very methodical on how you do this. You must take into account when you do the samples. Prime example are all you measurement done the same direction of you print head movement. Print head direction can and does give the most variation of paste topography.

2d inspection is a stop gap measure at best. I have been on evaluations where the customer as been using a 2D paste inspection and 3D sampling. And 3D SPI still reduced the number of solder defects by up to 70%. (Please don�t start saying her comes the sales pitch I m the install engineer and I m not saying for who)

This statement is will agree with >�It adds NO VALUE whatsoever to do 3D inspection as part of in-line production.�< No inspection does add value there is nothing intrinsic, in any sort of inspection that adds value��.. But what inspection does do is give you the ability to increase yields. By giving real feed back to you. So you actually know how to use and setup your printer correctly and then use the inspection machine to catch the anomalies.

If you don�t wish to go the inline route there are other options as well. Some of the SPI manufactures also offer bench top versions of their machines which will inspect 100% of a board and allow easier SPC analysis of your process.

JS

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