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Happy New Year everyone! Typically the new year signals a new beginning, but thispost will be concluding our series on reflow profilingby discussing the fourth stage of a reflow profile: the

Folks, Some years ago I received the request below: Hi Dr. Lasky, I am a precious metals recycler and would very much appreciate your verifying the validity of an equation that approximates the Karat

Folks, the adventures of The Professor continue……… So far the meeting with The Professor had proven very valuable John thought.He was anxious to hear the other suggestions that The

"Well what should we do Professor?" John said weakly. "Clearly, not shut the line down over the lunch break," The Professor responded quickly. "We can't!"said John,

Folks, For the next few weeksI plan to repost some of the first Patty and the Professor episodes. As I visited several facilities, some of them in other industries, I found that uptime is as vital a

Folks, I teach a course at Dartmouth on manufacturing processes: ENGM 185. In this course, I use many of the chapters from “The Adventures of Patty and the Professor.” This book started as a

While Indium Corporation is well-knownas a solder supplier, it is less known for its ability to recycle solder.Indium Corporation’s solder reclaim program uses state-of-the-art electrolytic

Folks, It is accepted as fact by everyone that I know that 2/3rd of all SMT defects can be traced back to the stencil printing process. A number of us have tried to find a reference for this posit,

In my previous post on this topic, Stages of a Reflow Profile: Part II, I mentioned a few profile-induced soldering defects, including graping, tombstoning, and voiding. In this post,we will talk

This week we learned about an exciting new liquid metal-infused polymer, made with a gallium-indium alloy, which can be used to form circuits that heal themselves after being damaged. Today, Eric

Over the last few days we have learned about how to create stretchable electronics from gallium and indium embedded into an elastomer. Today we continue the conversation with Eric Markvicka and look

We are back again with Eric Markvicka to talk about how easy it is to form a stretchable electrical circuit with liquid metal-embedded material and some simple tools. Jim: Eric, at first blush your

Yesterday Eric Markvicka demonstrated self-healing electronics for us with his video of a liquid metal embedded elastomer. Today, we discuss a composite material that is electrically insulating until

Brook Sandy-Smith, Technical Support Engineer for PCB Assembly Materials, and Phil Zarrow, discuss how vacuum reflow soldering can be used to reduce voiding. Phil Zarrow: Brook, there's been a

This week we will be discussing the future of self-healing electronics with Eric Markvicka of Carnegie Mellon University. At the time of writing this, Eric is a PhD Student working on his thesis:

In my last post, Stages of a Reflow Profile: Part I, I discussed how thespattering of solder balls and solder paste slumping can occur in the beginning stages of a reflow profile. In this post I will

Often times solder defects such as spattering, voiding, slumping/bridging, and tombstoning can be remedied just by adjusting the reflow profile. For this reason it is important to understand the

Your first consideration when determining how much flux to use in your solder wire is whether you are doing hand soldering or robotic soldering. Robotic soldering requires a greater flux percent than

Folks, Soldering copper to copper with a tin-based solder, such as tin-lead eutectic solder or a common lead-free solder like SAC305, requires only the liquid solder and copper to form the tin-copper

Folks, Pity Ötzi, The Iceman, circa 3500BC. It is believed that he was involved in copper smelting as both copper particles and arsenic, a trace element in some copper ores, were found in his

In a previous post I mentioned some non-solder uses for low melting point alloys – meaning that they are used for purposes other than simply “joining two surfaces with a filler