Soldering 101, it’s more than Sn / Pb and Flux

Mike Hoss

Abstract:

In today’s ever changing PWB assembly world, soldering has been pushed to the rear of technology world somewhat “taken for granted”. Some people have even said “It’s just soldering Printed Circuit Boards, how hard can it be?” Soldering is the bases of the assembly world; it is what connects all the components together making them a circuit.

Soldering a PWB today is more than just “slapping parts on the board and sending it down a conveyor.” The life of the PWB depends on the quality of the solder process. From the Solder Process Engineer perspective, it is a delicate balancing act of simultaneously recognizing the combined physics of the environment, materials, components, and machinery and knowing both what to do to maintain current solder joint integrity of production throughput. More importantly, when the solder joint integrity goes askew, it is solder process engineer who must troubleshoot the root cause and making the necessary process adjustments as quickly as possible.

This discussion will cover types of solder materials, methods of design for soldering, types of soldering process, cleaning methods, inspection of soldering and industry standards. It is by no means the final answer on soldering, just a good baseline to return to, and to build from.

Michael J. Hoss – Biography

— 30+ year veteran in manufacturing of electronic assemblies

— Currently: SMT Process & Automation Engineer, Johns Hopkins University – Applied Physics Lab

— Former Manufacturing and Principal Engineer for:

— Sparton Electronics

— Littelfuse Inc.

— Shure Electronics

— Motorola AIEG

— Co-author and reviewer of Dr. Charles Hutchins last book “Understanding and using Surface Mount and Fine Pitch Technology”.

— Four US patents

— Author and Co-author of internal manufacturing design and assembly publications

— Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (supply your date of certification)

Click here for some pictures from the course