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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

Folks, Soldering is an ancient technology. It is estimated that soldering was first discovered as long ago as 4000 BC. So soldering was much more ancient to Julius Caesar (100BC – 44 BC) than

Folks, Patty, Pete, Rob and the Professor were having their weekly book club meeting. As they were wrapping up, Patty said, “Remember about a month ago we talked about using an SMT Pretest

Patty was excited about today’s book club meeting with, “The Boys.” She had started calling her husband Rob, her former co-worker at ACME and now research technologist at Ivy U,

Folks, My good friends, Phil Zarrow and Jim Hall, in their award-winning audio series “Board Talk,” were recently asked about the “Five Ball Rule”. In the comments section for

Folks, Let’s see how Patty is doing, it’s been a very, very long time… Even though Patty and her husband Rob both worked at Ivy University, they seldom drove in together. It was

Phil Zarrow: Robert, the industry standard for process characterization is Cpk, and sometimes Cpu; Dr. Lasky has discussed this as it pertains to assembly processes. With regard to materials,

I just read an article published on an SMT-focused website by Paul Socha. Mr. Socha was the Manager of Applications Engineering for many years and was instrumental in creating the group that Indium

Phil Zarrow: Eric, the topic of surface insulation resistance, SIR. What exactly is it? What are we doing here? Eric Bastow: Well, simply put you are measuring the electrical reliability of a

The tremendous increase in the use of bottom terminated components (BTCs), some estimates are at more than 50 billion per year, have heightened the concern for minimizing voiding between the thermal

Robotic Soldering II After reading my last post on robotic soldering, you have decided that you have a good robotic soldering application and want to get started. You have also decided that you will

We have had a chance to look at low-temperature solder alloys and indium in particular. Now it is time to look at high-temperature solder and braze alloy options. Bernie Leavitt is our Senior Product

Phil Zarrow: Brook, we've discussed handling solder paste from the refrigerator to the stencil printer, but there's a lot more to this story, particularly from the factory to the customer.

Most articles I have read regarding Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs) focus on one application. Others generally focus on only one material (the material the author is promoting). In the case of a

In our first post about The Right Solder Alloy for the Right Application, we discussed low-temperature solderalloys in general, including bismuth- and indium-containing alloys. In this post we are

Promation Robotic Soldering Unit Folks, There is currently considerable interest in robotic soldering, with good reason. Robotic soldering can increase productivity and profitability, but it must be