Abstract
Maximizing the throughput of an assembly line while concurrently ensuring good quality and high reliability is the primary focus of a contract printed circuit board assembly environment. Reduction of the cycle time associated with the assembly process, therefore, is of prime importance. The surface mount assembly steps include stencil printing, component placement and reflow soldering. Stencil printing is typically not the bottleneck in the assembly sequence. However, there are specific assemblies in which the stencil printing operation is the bottleneck. This research focused on reducing the cycle time associated with the stencil printing step by increasing the print speed. Designed experiments were carried out on commercially available solder pastes to investigate their ability to be stencil printed at high speeds (76 to 178 mm per second). A wide range of component types, including ball grid arrays and 0.3-mm (12 mil) pitch ultrafine pitch components, were studied. The heights of the solder paste deposits and the print definition obtained were the response variables considered. This study also determined the impact of various squeegee materials and powder sizes on solder paste deposition. It was observed that some newer commercially available solder paste formulations could be consistently and repeatably deposited at print speeds up to 178 mm (7 inches) per second.
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