As I was doing some solder paste printing today, I said to myself, "These are the same cleanliness steps I follow when painting a car."
I’m a car guy and, when it comes to painting, I need it to be perfect. Some key factors are prep, spray gun adjustments, the surface cleanliness, and, last but not least, the paint brand.
Having any one of these factors off, even a little, can cause a bad paint job. This brings us back to solder paste printing. As a college intern, I've learned that every paste has its own properties, including its ability to print well under specific conditions. For example, a dirty stencil can cause the apertures to not perform the way they are supposed to, resulting in insufficient solder deposits on the printed circuit board (PCB). This leads to poor product performance and possibly a failure of the solder joint (after reflow).
If the solder paste printing equipment is not calibrated or set up properly that can also cause a poor print job. Another key factor is the stencil pressure, specific to each type of solder paste.
Auto paints are all different, with each looking different in the end. At Indium Corporation, all of our paste is high quality, with lots of research and development backing each one.
Why does this relate to us? It shows the steps and process it takes to make a good quality solder paste print to have the least amount of voids, resulting in high customer satisfaction.
-John