Re: Solder Paste Testing

Has anyone ever heard of testing solder paste quality by pasting a board and making a determination of the quality by measuring paste height and width after the board is pasted. Would you consider this a valid test for solder paste testing?

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| Has anyone ever heard of testing solder paste quality by pasting a board and making a determination of the quality by measuring paste height and width after the board is pasted. Would you consider this a valid test for solder paste testing? |

Mark,

This is more a test of the whole process (stencil, stencil printer setup, solderpaste, etc.) then a test of the solderpaste itself.

Steve

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| Has anyone ever heard of testing solder paste quality by pasting a board and making a determination of the quality by measuring paste height and width after the board is pasted. Would you consider this a valid test for solder paste testing? | I agree with Steve. Even solder that passes all the tests could still fail at the printer due to too much force, print too fast, dirty stencil, etc., etc and the paste will change over time. By monitoring this continuously you will know when your solder is reaching failure mode. I haven't figured out the benifits of solder paste testing yet even though I used to do it elsewhere. My operators can tell just by mixing and the first print whether the paste is defective and it's only occurred twice in the last two years; both instances the supplier was VERY responsive and got a new lot to me the very next day. Did I mention that I buy less than a months supply and control my FIFO religously.

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| Has anyone ever heard of testing solder paste quality by pasting a board and making a determination of the quality by measuring paste height and width after the board is pasted. Would you consider this a valid test for solder paste testing? | I have our operators do solder paste volume/height inspection too. We perform this inspection to validate the process, more than test the paste. Indeed, I am �testing� the paste, but just to assure that the process is placing the proper amount of material down where we need it. Obviously, this type of inspection does not assure proper viscosity, metal amount, impurities, etc� but that�s what vendor quality assurance is about.

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