Eric, IMHO, the bad news on vapor phase are the hazardous chemistry and waste issues. I really don't think it would be economical to use in a high volume commercial environment. I never heard good things about in line vapor phase units in a SnPb (or Lead Free) production environment, regardless of volume. Good news, by being in an inert atmosphere, which will increase the process window by allowing less than optimum material to be soldered, I think it would be worth considering for specific low volume applications i.e. aerospace. As far as generating a thermal profile, depending upon the unit I don't really see a problem with it having done it on a Corpane VP23BU vapor phase batch unit. I found the profile easy to generate, maintain, and control. It has been a while since I fooled around with it - I'm assuming that the chemistries can reach the higher Lead Free Soldering temperatures for SAC. A neat thing about a batch unit is that by sticking you head above the cooling coils, you can see the actual soldering process as opposed to waiting for the hardware to come out of the convection oven. Which explains a lot... Hope this helps. Good Luck. Lee Whiteman, PMP Senior Member Engineering Staff L-3 Communications East Telephone: (856) 338-3508 FAX: (856) 338-2906 E-Mail: [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric CHRISTISON Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 8:57 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Vapor Phase Soldering - The way Forward? Subject Re: [TN] FW: [LF] Vapor Phase Soldering " I should also opine that when soldering RoHS-compliant assemblies using lead-free solder paste, you will probably get a much better yield with VPS than you ever will with convection. Especially in the case of SAC solders. " Richard's statement prompts me to ask a related question. The subject of vapour phase soldering came up in a review that I attended this morning on the qualification of a new semiconductor package. It was stated that VP soldering would become a lot more popular in the future because of a number of advantages it has over hot air when using it on lead free components. What is the opinion of Technet on this? I'm particularily interested on predictions of it's usage for the manufacture of high volume PWB assys for consumer electronics. Thanks, -- Eric Christison Msc Mechanical Engineer Consumer & Micro group Imaging Division STMicroelectronics (R&D) Ltd 33 Pinkhill Edinburgh EH12 7BF United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)131 336 6165 Fax: + 44 (0)131 336 6001 --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------