Current Advances in Soldering Technology Feature Interview by Nolan Johnson and Barry Matties I-CONNECT007
Nolan Johnson and Barry Matties spoke with Clemens Jargon to explore some of the issues and dynamics that he sees from Mycronic’s point of view in advanced soldering technology. They cover trends in the industry, jetting vs. stencil printing, and the many different solder paste options.
Nolan Johnson: There have been a lot of changes
in soldering technologies and the development of respective materials, including the functions and machinery supporting the process of getting components soldered onto a board. How would you assess the current development work and advances and challenges for depositing solder paste on PCBs?
Clemens Jargon: That’s a very good question, which hits to the point why Mycronic is doing jet printing rather than stencil printing. When you look into the standard stencil printing process, which is one of the most aged technolo64
SMT007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2020
Clemens Jargon gies within the entire SMT process, the stencil printing process is prone to defects. There are a lot of reasons for insufficiencies, such as bridges in depositing solder paste or opens. No doubt, there are also material concerns. When you are able to avoid these inherent stencil printing defects, then you can significantly improve the entire process quality. Solder paste material issues are hard to adjust and hard to change, but for anything that is in our control, meaning the depositing process, we can make very effective changes. Our goal is to eliminate 90% of paste-related issues; when we reach this, we can turn >50% of defective boards into perfect products. We want to increase the first-pass yield for our customers, that’s why we focus on jet printing. Instead of using stencils, we jet print any dots needed on PCBs. We avoid stencil printing and any of its related issues, which helps to avoid costs for buying stencils, which also includes support costs for storing and cleaning stencils. The entire jet printing process is a much more modern way in comparison to stencil printing to improve the first-pass yield, and the quality of our customers’ finished goods.
