Technical Articles

Mr. Clean

October 25, 2017

By Tim O’Neill, Technical Marketing Manager

Published in CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY

Picking the right tool to prevent electrochemical contaimination at the rework bench.

A half-dozen versions of the same scenario occurred in the past month, all having to do with materials and processes used in post-op/rework applications. This step of the production process often escapes the attention of engineers because there’s no cool machinery or any real engineering that takes place. Most hand-solder operators are highly proficient and have developed techniques that get the job done, which can lull a supervisor or production manager...

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Life After SAC

June 28, 2017

By Tim O’Neill, Technical Marketing Manager

Published in CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY

With RoHS exemptions set to expire, can SAC305 hang on?

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
– Charles Darwin

The final steps of RoHS will be phased in over the next 24 months and once implemented; lead will be virtually eliminated from the solder supply chain for electronic assembly. With the last exemptions applying predominantly to high reliability applications, the materials in use are being scrutinized to determine if they can perform to the mission...

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Solder Alloy Fragmentation

March 13, 2017

By Tim O’Neill, Technical Marketing Manager

Published in CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY

I vividly remember a moment in 1994, sitting in a job interview, trying to conjure an image of the periodic table for the abbreviations for tin (Sn) and lead (Pb). Of course, these weren’t easy guesses because both elements’ abbreviations are derived from their Latin roots: tin from stannum and lead from plumbum. I incorrectly provided my interviewer with the abbreviation for titanium (Ti) and the famously nonexistent unobtainium (Uo). As confused as I was at the time, little did I realize how simple things actually were.

Back then, there was essentially one alloy in use for electronics assembly: Sn63/Pb37. A few specialized applications used a small percentage of...

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