Xray equipment is very useful for seeing a number of defects including:
Shorts, Irregular shaped terminations, Voids, and "scavenging".

You don't necessarily need to buy an X-ray -- you can always lease.
That's what we did (lease to buy).  

What type of "old" reflow oven do you have?

We use a 10 zone and don't use N2.  It works for us.



-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Blair K. Hogg
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2005 10:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Kicking and Screaming

Happy Friday, Technetters!

OK, now that I've gotten your attention, our Engineering folks have been
trying to drag the manufacturing folks (kicking and screaming) into the
21st century (or maybe even just the 20th century) in terms of
manufacturing capabilities. We are a low volume high mix OEM, with
limited SMT capabilities. The R&D guys want to use the more
sophisticated stuff, but the old equipment we have just isn't up to the
task. We struggle with 208pin QFPs and other high density devices. They
would like to use smaller components, and possibly even BGAs. 

I know for smaller components we would have to upgrade to a better pick
and place machine with more accurate component placement. But for BGAs,
the existing machine may be able to place them, but currently we have no
way to tell how well it worked, other than whether it passed or failed
functional test. 

I've seen the "look-under" BGA inspection equipment, but I believe that
we would probably need the X-ray machine to do the job. I've also heard
that our old reflow oven may not even do a good job at reflowing BGAs. 

Is X-ray inspection necessary? And will any old reflow oven solder a
BGA? 

Thanks,

Blair

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