Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1534953
of equipment that would do all of that in a reason- able amount of time with the ability to handle a lot of capacity. Doing hot and cold in the same unit is quite challenging. We were close to that with the original HATS Tester at -55°C to +160°C. Then, we decided to decrease the lower end to -65°C and the upper end to +265°C. We went through the development process with new materials, a new higher power heater, new chiller system, and other things that we needed to do to make that happen. This entire Reflow Attachment Process Simulation and Thermal Shock Cycling can now be done in a HATS² test system in less than a day. We placed the HATS² test system in indepen- dent test laboratories for more than four years to ensure the software was stable and usable before releasing a retail version. We have now put the system on the market for sale to the industry. It's a mature product that solves an industry problem that several large OEMs, as well as many military and aero- space companies, now require for their boards. The ultimate goal of this test methodology is to pro- vide an alternative to the microsection, where we dip coupons into the solder pot, cut three via structures in half, and look for pretty plating. We've held on to that for so long, and it's so ingrained in our industry. But as the industry is moving into substrates, embedded compo- nents and ultra HDI, the via structures are so small and difficult to find that it becomes economically unfeasi- ble to microsection these at any sort of speed. You get a lot more information about performance and reliability from the HATS² test system than from the microsection. In the end, it's just a change from a visual- to a performance-based evaluation. When you've done something for around 60 years, it's hard to let go. We are focused on moving this via structure reli- ability technology toward the mainstream where OEMs see the value and say, "I've saved this much money by using this method rather than microsections." That's what's pushing them. Was cycle time the primary driver for this development? Neves: Initially, yes, because nobody wanted to wait 42 days for dual-chamber reliability results. Reliability is about stressing the product without overstressing it. It is the nature of reliability that this process takes time. But even with that, nobody wants to wait so they come up with ways to accelerate failures using robustness Bob Neves