Thank you for this comment. It is often an unmentioned detail, however a very important one. When soldering to an ENIG finish, the gold surface is completely consumed into the solder joint and an intermetallic must form between the solder alloy and the nickel in order to call the soldering process a success.

When the nickel is covered by an oxide layer, the typical solder fluxes are not “strong” enough to remove this oxide and rather than seeing a dissolution of nickel into the solder, the nickel will remain completely intact and the solder will “ball up” on the surface.

It won’t be pretty.

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For the solder to bond with a standard flux, the nickel under the gold plating must be clean. Most precious-metal platers are aware of this; however, care must be taken to clean the nickel prior to gold plating in any soldering locations.

Thanks.

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Thank you for making the point that just because something is made in China, it is not low quality. That is not the point I was trying to make in my posting and I do not want to be percieved as believing that. The vast majority of things purcahsed on a daily basis are made partially if not entirely in China and are great quality.

Unfortunately, my Adirondack chairs were not what I bargained for. The Adirondacks are quite local to me and these particular Chinese manufactured “Adirondack” chairs were not near the quality of the authentic Adirondack-made ones. Regardless of whether these were made in China, Michigan, or the Bahamas, they were not authentic. In order to achieve the product I desired, I had to fork over the funds to support it. A great deal more effort goes into manufacturing these local chairs than the generic manufacturers include.

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I agree with Amanda, our job is to help other engineers make the right choices. We are a free resource for our customers, and feel honored to work on demanding projects that require high levels of reliability.

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I have a question here.
How about high lead bumps (95%Pb-5%Sn)? What is the suitable flux?
Thanks a lot!

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FYI, cedar does grow in China. Were you trying to say products made in China are all low quality?

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While plasma cleaning can be effective for some applications, in other cases it causes solderability problems. Some engineers become “plasma addicted” and want to plasma clean everything! My advice is to test it and make sure it still does improve solderability with each new application.

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I thought the rule of thumb was that creep could occur at >0.3 to 0.5 of the absolute temperature (in Rankine or Kelvin)? Where did the 90% figure come from?

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Looking for a high temperature solder preform to solder a copper coint (inmersion gold plated) to a second layer of a FR4 (PCB). Thickness aorung 0.18mm. other dimension length ~51mm, by 20mm width. What product would you recomend?
I can be reached at my email of 847-632-5289.
Your prompt respond will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

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My Dad’s a star, Awesome!

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Hi!
Actually we are using NC-SMQ®230 SAC387 (JAR) Indium Allow Solder on dispensing applications.

It is applied for adding electroless nickel over copper terminal of (40 mils diameter x 900 mils lenght) on ceramic sustrate for our Power electronics Product. Commonly we have problems because solder lift terminals creating a problem , because it create an effect of shorter terminals. I experiment changing for syringe presentation and it improve a little from 4% to 3% of this defect but i’m sure i’m not applying correctly Temperature profile . Could you guide me on my application for reduce surface tension and prevent this problem???

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Thanks for mentioning the article. Our knowledge has grown exponentially because historically not much technical knowledge was needed. In the last 30 years the electronics industry have taken soldering way further than any plumber would have ever imagined!

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I look forward to learning more. Nice job.

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congratulations! I look forward to learning more about engineered solders.

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Carol,
Welcome to the blogosphere.

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