Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1243344
MAY 2020 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 45 ponents or 1600 pads on the board. There's also 0.4- and 0.3-millimeter devices on the board, as well as 0.4-millimeter BGAs. A lot of assemblers, especially the contract shops, need to show the capability to their OEM before they can start production on these new package types. This demonstrates the assem- bly process. Also, because the board is wired out to test points or gold fingers, you can perform reli- ability qualifications on these new package types as well. We have also used it on multi- ple occasions to test different stencil designs. And we've been using it a lot to develop the print process for the 008004s or 0201 metrics in conjunction with a stencil printer manu- facturer and a paste manufacturer. We're all working together to roll out a process for that. One of the pieces of feedback I got was from an OEM who said, "Given this kit, I should be able to walk into any CEM at 8:00 in the morning with a box of parts and a jump drive of files, and if they're not running by noon, they're not any good." We're using it to benchmark SPI and AOI equipment. Also, we have IPC placement rates and other place- ment rates. I'm aware of at least one com- pany that's taking this board to the different placement manufacturers to see how close their placement rates are to published data and what's going to be the best for their oper- ation. Johnson: It sounds like there is plenty of oppor- tunity for this board to be used as a testbed. Shea: Yes, for all kinds of things. Hopefully, it will become a more mainstream universal test vehicle for the next few years. And when we need to put a smaller component on, I'll be happy to spin the artwork. That's what makes it fun. Johnson: Fantastic. Chrys, thank you for your time. Shea: It's my pleasure. SMT007 Shea: Exactly. If they don't like the reflow results on any of the pastes, maybe they need to go back and revisit their profile. I see this phenomenon all the time, where people use banged up stencils and squeegees. If you go into a test introducing that much noise into it, you're not going to get very clear results, and I tend to get on a soapbox about tooling because it's so important. There's a lot of different things to consider, but you're absolutely right. You will find your own factory's strengths and weaknesses. A lot of my clients test the most popular pastes in the country. I've run so many tests on them that by looking at the data off of some- body's printer or SPI machine, I can tell you whether a particular paste should print that way or not. And using the same test board makes that call even easier. Johnson: To run this benchmark test, do you need somebody that knows the test well to help you interpret the data? Shea: I would say no because we tried to make it as easy as possible. This was an effort by myself, Dr. Neil Poole of Henkel—who has over 30 years in being on the floor printing at var- ious different customers—Dr. Mark Currie— who has 25–30 years in paste development and did his Ph.D. in solder paste printing—and Doug Dixon—who is also a 30–35-year vet- eran of the industry. There were well over 100 years of experience trying to make this simple as possible, and that's where the step by step comes in. That's also where the list of tests and descriptions comes in. This should be completely self-manageable; several organiza- tions have run it according to this, and they've done absolutely fine with it. You don't need an expert. That said, I'd be happy to help you for a certain fee (laughs), but you can do this all on your own. Johnson: What else can we use this board for? Shea: Many people need to demonstrate capa- bility for the next package size down, which for a lot of us is 01005, and there's 800 com-