The Largest Trade-off in Printing UltraFine Solder Pastes is in Reflow
In a six-part SMT assembly series, we discussed the advantages of using fine powder solder pastes to improve process yields for stencil printing, espe...
SMT Solder
A Look Inside SMTA Certification with Tim Hults
Indium Corporation’s newest Global Accounts technical service engineer, Tim Hults, recently earned his SMTA Process Certification. Indium Corpor...
A 10 Sigma Solder Paste Printing Process?
Folks, Let’s check in on Patty as she is about to wrestle with claims of a 10 Sigma Solder Paste Printing Process involving the world’s sm...
SMT Optimization For Success - Part 6: The Effect of Solder Particle Size on Printing Using Ultrafine Stencil Apertures
SMT Optimization for Success Part 6: Solder Paste Particle Size and Its Effect on Stencil Printing Ultra-fine Solder Paste Deposits This final post...
Pin-in-Paste Aperture Solder Volume Calculations with StencilCoach(TM)
Folks, The pin-in-paste (PIP) process is often the best choice when the PCBA is a mixed SMT and through-hole board with a small number of thr...
SMTAI 2014 - Technical Conference Participation
SMTA International (SMTAI) will be held in Rosemont, Illinois, September 30 through October 1, 2014. I am very excited about the show as I am e...
Stencil Coach™ Calculates Optimal Solder Paste Printing Aperture Parameters: Now Available Online
Folks, A while ago, I developed an Excel-based spreadsheet, StencilCoach™, that calculates optimal stencil aperture parameters for several commo...
Square with Radius Corners vs. Circular Apertures: SMT Optimization for Success Part 4:
In our continued investigation and quest to improve solder paste printing for fine-feature paste deposits, we also found that consistency (low standar...
SMT Optimization for Success Part 3: Flux Chemistry
SMT Optimization for Success Part 3: Flux Chemistry In our continued discussion on optimizing the stencil printing process (see Part 1, Part 2), the t...
Stencil Printing for SMT Assembly Success Part 2: Print Metrics
(See Part 1) When discussing success in solder paste stencil printing for SMT assembly, one of the most important tools in an engineer‘s “...
Stencil Printing for Success: Solder Paste Handling and Storage
SMT Optimization for Success in Printing Ultrafine Solder Paste Deposits The SMT industry widely accepts that ~60% of solder defects occur at the ste...
Does Lead-Free Assembly Use a Lot More Electricity and High Melt Lead-Free Solders?
Folks, An obvious disadvantage of lead-free assembly is that the oven must be hotter and therefore will use more electricity. But is the extra ...