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Solder Paste Printing First Pass
Board Talk
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TranscriptPhil Welcome to Board Talk with Jim Hall and Phil Zarrow of ITM Consulting. The Assembly Brothers, Pick and Place. And if you can figure out which one is Pick and which one is Place, more power to you. But that is not really what matters today. What really matters is this question we received today. This is from S.G. He writes, "Is it recommended to print one cycle before printing the first production board? I could use a scrap board or blank plastic card for the first print." Jim Yes. This is an issue to the wonderful world of setup. Of starting up a line to produce a different product than you have been producing or the first product in the morning. The idea of being efficient and minimizing time, materials and everything. So yes, of course you could print on a scrap board or a blank plastic card but how are you going to evaluate it? What is the issue here? I want to make sure that my printer is ready. The question you could ask yourself is, why wouldn't it be ready if I properly put on the solder paste and kneaded it if I have to. Why shouldn't my first print be good? If you say well, I really need to be sure then how are you going to determine it? If you use a scrap board that would have fiducials then you could evaluate it using an automatic solder paste inspection, either the 2D on your machine or a 3D after the machine SPI system. If you use a blank plastic card the only way you can inspect that would be visually. That is not a really good technique for evaluating the quality of printing. But in any case, suppose you print on a scrap board or blank piece of card and the print is good. What do you do? Well then you put a real board in and print it. So you have wasted that first print, and the time it took you to print it. Whereas if you print it on a good board and it looked good you can immediately start your production with your first board going into your first placement machine. Obviously if it wasn't good you would have to clean or correct that first board. So those are your options. I would use the first board and try to get your setup procedure so that your first print is good. You have good solder paste at the proper temperature. It is properly applied on the stencil. You have kneaded the paste with your squeegee if that is an option on your stencil. So that your first print is good. You inspect it and then you immediately put that board in your placement machine and you are up and running. You have reduced your overall setup time. Got your line up running faster and increased your utilization and your productivity. Phil It is almost a matter of how much faith do you have in your initial design and experiment when you arrived at the initial settings on the printer. How much faith do you have in the maintenance of the printer for consistency? And the fact that your operator follows proper setup procedure. Then it becomes, as Jim said, an efficiency situation, best practices meet efficiency. Do you think that is the best way of putting it? Jim Yes. And the main question is, why wouldn't that first print be good? And what can I do to make sure that it is good so that I can immediately start my production and not waste any more downtime. Phil Very good. Well we hope that we answered your question as well as whatever other people are pondering these days. Just to remind you that, although the IPC tries to come up with a new acronym every time we say it, you have been listening to Board Talk with Phil and Jim. And whatever you do, however you are applying your solder paste please don't solder like my brother. Jim And don't solder like my brother. |
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