Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1398328
60 SMT007 MAGAZINE I AUGUST 2021 ing to me what was going on, and we were CT scanning these products as we were speaking. Hopefully, by the end of the day, we're going to at least have some idea of what's going on and we can help this customer out and get them pointed in the direction of a solution. Johnson: You mentioned pent-up demand. Is this a bunch of brand-new product starts, or are you seeing projects that were paused through the lockdowns? Boguski: A lot of projects that were paused or put on the slow track, either due to financing or lack of availability of resources, supply chain problems—the things that we all read about, lack of components—are starting to come to fruition, getting the green light, and transi- tioning from prototyping into the production stage. Maybe they were being done at a slower pace surreptitiously for the 14 months previ- ous and suddenly things have opened up and they need to move fast to make a market win- dow. Almost everything we're hearing that is new is extremely urgent. I've taken on a hand- ful of new customers in the past week and for every single new customer, the theme is the same: "I need something done right now. I need it in days, not in weeks. I need to obtain answers either to my problem or to get this product tested and get it out the door by the end of the month." Johnson: What's your take on this, Rob? Is this a board design/electronics design issue? For the products you're seeing, do they need to be designed for more stress or more capability than they have been previ- ously? Boguski: Yes. Or they were hastily designed with lit- tle or no consideration for the manufactur- ing environment. Case in point, we're work- ing on a project now, basically refereeing a dispute between a bare board fabricator and a contract manufacturer. A bunch of boards got built, shipped to the field, and started failing. e OEM started tearing into them, found pin- holes in solder, which in some cases had metas- tasized into voids, and they claim these are the root cause of field failures. e OEM goes back to the assembly house, which points the fin- ger at the fab house. e fab house returns fire, pointing a finger at the assembly house. en we get the call: We're going to give you a ran- dom sampling of boards; tell us what you see. We're now under contract to do a very thor- ough solder joint-level X-ray inspection of a small sampling of boards. No prior opin- ions, just report the results. Depending on the results, there's either a much larger lot of boards lying behind it with the same lot num- ber that these were sampled from, and the results are that no trouble was found (for the most part), then certain things will happen; on the other hand, if we find lots of things, either assembly induced or fab level, then the repercussions could result in a much larger lot of boards showing up on our door sometime this month to do some form of screening good from bad. Voids in BGA in a non-destructive 3D scan.