Within the past two weeks at Indium Corporation I have learned so much. All of which just keeps growing to expand my personal experience, and to strengthen my engineering skills.
All of my laboratory projects and group meetings make me think differently, and they make me work in a way to learn and expand my knowledge. My team members at Indium Corporation who have taught me the fundamentals of solder paste include: Brook Sandy-Smith, Eric Bastow, Maria Durham, and Glen Thomas. I want to give a huge thanks to them for teaching me so much. They make me learn in a way which not only helps me improve my understanding of everything, but it puts me in the real world experience giving presentations in our weekly group meetings.
Some of the projects I have worked on with my team members are SIR testing and SMT printing. SIR (Surface Insolation Resistance) testing characterizes the PCB manufacturing and electronics assembly process residues and their impact on reliability. It is usually performed on industry standard test board coupons containing patterns, typically interlocking comb test patterns, designed for process testing purposes. The patterns are exposed to a high humidity environment which mobilizes any surface contaminates and reduces the insulation resistance of the test pattern.
SMT (Surface Mount Technology) printing of solder paste on PCBs allows us to test the different types of paste and compare them to each other. After going through the reflow oven the defects that can occur are: poor wetting, bridging, graping, HIP (Head in pillow), and tombstoning. Due to the huge selection of different pastes Indium Corporation develops there is a paste for every application.
Sincerely,
John Russo