| | | | A potential customer of our is inquiring if we have capability | | | | for Hot Bar manufacturing in the PCBA manufacturing world. If someone can explain to me what this entails, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. | | | | | | | One of the earlier uses for hot bar manufacturing/soldering techniques was tape automated bonding (TAB). I used it first in 1984 on flexible circuits to mass terminate/solder SOIC and QFP leads in the 50 mil arena. Haven't kept up with it to date, but doubt if many changes have been made as other reflow techniques have been advanced. | | | | | | Earl Moon | | | | | Jeez, must be getting older today. Forgot to say what it was/is. It was, or maybe it wasn't, more than a large soldering iron with a reflow bar as its tip. I mean, you mass terminate all leads on one , two, or four sides, instead of one at a time, of a device's leads with the thing. It's not unlike some desoldering devices used instead of hot air. Hell, it's something like that - if memory serves and, obviously, it doesn't - to well! | | | | Moonman | |Yes, Earl, this one caused many of us to dust off our brains. As I recall this technique was promoted by Universal and most of these machines are gathering dust today. The elements were called thermodes and were a low mass resistance element. I think it helped with co-planarity problems. Gary, is your customer's application something unique? If not you can probably do better with the techniques we know and use today. | John | | John and Earl,
Thanks for your incredulous memories!! I didn't know I was asking about something as ancient as this, but you're information is very much appreciated. Earl, no, this isn't a unique application for the customer, so i'll recommend our more modern techniques. Thanks again, guys.
Gary
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