Recently WorkingBear got complaint from R&D and ask increase the solder paste volume on the MLCC (Multi-Layer Ceramic Capacitor) component pads to improve the capacitor broken issue. R&D said he had verified that the capacitor’s footprint in the board design is correct and followed manufacturer’s design guidelines. However, looks like there is not enough solder paste to form proper heel fillet on the terminal of capacitor. This insufficient solder paste volume make the solder cracking?
Recently my top manager ask to mount the shielding-can or shielding-cover directly on the board to instead of mount the shielding-clip or shielding-frame on the board first then cover the shieling-can. He said this new process is more cheap and reach good RF performance. Also most of the cell phone board apply this solution.
Well, I must say yes. Directly mount the shielding-can on the board is cheap and save labor hour as compare it with mount one component on the board first then install another component to cover it. But this new requirement also got lots of negative feedback from SMT factory and repair center. Because of directly mount shielding-can on board means that repair guy must dis-solder the shielding can first before repair the component under the shielding can. It make the repair job more difficult and may give more trouble and damage the board during repair.
| Trouble | Suggested Remedies (Solutions) |
| DIMENSIONAL PROBLEMS | |
| Shot-to-shot dimensional variations |
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| Warping 彎曲變形 |
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First of all, with the rapid growth of mobile phone technology, the Electronic Manufacturing Service (EMS) in mainland China sometimes meet serious labor shortage. Second, the Industry 4.0 promotes the requirement of factory automation for each EMS. Therefore, many parts which cannot adopt SMT reflow process are requested to fulfill Paste-In-Hole process (PIH process), such as the type-A USB connectors, Ethernet connector, power supply sockets, transformers, and so on. Originally, most of these kind of devices were touch-up soldered after SMT process.
Because of labor shortage, also for the purpose of saving process cost, and under the consideration of quality, many SI and EMS have requested that the parts which cannot adopt SMD process should fulfill at least PIH process, so that the soldering of all the electronic parts on circuit board can be completed after SMT process.
Today, one question from my boss, “Is there any difference or influence on the process and design if we like to convert the SMD parts to DIP type and go through the PIH(Paste-In-Hole) process?”
Later, I realized that the question aimed to avoid the damage of connector caused by customers’ misuse.
Sometimes, Paste-In-Hole (PIH) is also called Pin-In-Paste (PIP).
First, since the traditional insertion parts through PIH process is necessary to be manufactured with high-temperature reflow process, the part design should fulfill the considerations listed as follows:
