Paste life span on the printer

zam,

each paste mfg. has different "stencil life" times. check w/ your paste mfg's specification for stencil life. also, temp and humidity inside the printer's chamber effects "stencil life" time. we keep ours around 20C @ 50% RH. higher temps and lower RH's dry out the paste faster. Hope this helps.

Pete

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In order to track the board flow through your line you will have to hook up all conveyor input sensors as well as the last output sensor to a PLC. You can program the PLC to provide an alarm signal if a accumulative time of xxx hours for any board is exceeded. Stefan

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We just ran a study to try to determine this. We exposed the paste to 85% humidity to simulate worst case manufacturing. At various times we removed the paste from the chamber and tested it for tack, solder balling, wetting (copper coupon), and viscosity. Basically printability. We also ran 10 test boards down the line to see if there were any processing problems. We determined our paste could sit on the stencil for 3.5 hours with no detrimental effects.

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6 Work Life Test

6.1 Obtain a stencil with 15 to 20 rows of a series of 0.025 by 0.050 inch apertures spaced 0.050, 0.040, 0.025, 0.015, 0.010, 0.010, 0.025, 0.040, 0.050 inches apart. See Appendix 1. Source of supply: Metal Etching Technology.

6.2 Clean (i.e., chemically or with abrasion) the tarnish from a sheet of bare copper laminate.

6.3 Using the stencil described in paragraph 6.1 above. Apply enough paste for 5 to 6 prints.

6.4 Print the paste on the laminate.

6.5 Reflow solder the laminate using the paste manufacturer�s recommended profile.

6.6 Clean the laminate with isopropyl alcohol.

6.7 Inspect the solder fillet at X10 magnification.

6.8 Describe the fillet and the location of bridging between fillets. Ideally, there should be no bridging.

6.9 Quality Assurance may elect to archive the laminate.

6.10 Record the results.

6.11 Leave the paste on the stencil for one hour.

6.12 Repeat steps 6.2 through 6.11 above.

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There are also Process monitoring tools that mount directly to your blades and monitor the paste. Impedance Spectroscopy is the process monitoring theory behind the tool. It works by having good sample data logged that the monitoring tool can compare against. You can down load empf's report via the web http://www.empf.org under Order Technical Publications; Solderability Doc Number EMPF PP0016. www.aci-corp.org IS4000 Contact me for more details

Cdriscoll@aci-corp.org

Cal Sorry DAVE F. I feel like a sales man some times.

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