Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1389320
14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2021 Johnson: Is the intent to fix something that failed, and put it back out in the field? Camden: It could be two-fold. First, I believe it's just to get to the root cause of the failure. at's the most important thing. Figure out if it's something obvious in the process that can be changed or optimized. Once you figure that out, you can potentially save other product from being produced with that set of param- eters. Second, once we've depotted a compo- nent—if we didn't do any mechanical damage to it—they can use it as a replacement part. Johnson: It would seem to go together with the increased demand in the quantities of sourced components that automotive is going to require. If you think about it from that per- spective, this extra failure analysis work starts making sense. Camden: Sure. Anytime you can stop a failure from happening in the first place, it's usually worth the investment. Before, if a company saw one or two out of a thousand fall out, they may have just written that off; now they seem to be more likely to go ahead and do the FA work on it. Barry Matties: Are we going to see more parts reclamation? Camden: I do believe that's something that we're going to start seeing more of with parts availability. I know that Bob Wettermann has a good column which also appeared in the March 2021 issue of SMT007 Magazine about being able to salvage parts. I think that's some- thing that we're going to start seeing more, and we have been asked by certain clients to ver- ify cleanliness of these parts aer removal. It's kind of dribs and drabs right now, but I think as this chip shortage keeps happening, the longer it goes on, the longer we're going to see more people trying to recover components. Matties: It sounds like the shortage is going to be around for a couple of years anyway. Camden: It really does. Because they're so far behind now, it sounds like it's going to take them a year to catch up and another year to get back to zero. Happy Holden: We seemed to be okay in terms of supply before the pandemic; it's just that a year and a half later coming out of it, suddenly shortages show up. Camden: ey have worked through all the stock in the warehouse, and then it wasn't being refilled as fast as it was previously. So, it makes sense. Johnson: What are some of the most common challenges on the floor with respect to better reliability? Camden: Knowing how to troubleshoot your own process. You can't detect small changes in cleanliness with a ROSE tester. You've got to do localized extractions. You've got to do ion chromatography, and you have to use live product. Oen, we see customers qualify the B-52 test board through SIR; they'll even do 596-hour electrochemical migration testing. ey'll do some extended testing, and then they'll try to transfer that same recipe and all that material over to their actual product, which is obviously going to be a very different mix of parts, thickness, etc. Fine-tuning that process aer coming off the qualification pro- cess can be a little troublesome for some com- Anytime you can stop a failure from happening in the first place, it's usually worth the investment.