The electronics industry’s mantra has for many years been “Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Better and Cheaper.” 

Shear force measurement is a common and quick way of destructively assessing solder joints and complement pull strength measurements.

Part 2 of this retrospective, seen in last month’s issue of Global SMT and Packaging, took a bit of a detour from the topic to explore the reasoning and the impact of the ‘80% Rule.’

Part one left off noting that surface mount brought with it significant advantages to IC packaging but also that there was need to provide guidance for future development. The result of that effort is something that is now known as the ‘80% rule.’

There is definitely an increasing interest in conformal coating for electronics.

In an ideal world, components would only be purchased from the original producer, a franchised distributor or an approved non-franchised source.

Since the beginning, all IC packages have been designed to perform the basic tasks of interconnecting and protecting the semiconductor die and making it useful for interconnection at the next level.

There are two types of solder balls generally seen after wave soldering.

All IC packaging technology structures since the invention of the integrated circuit itself have been tasked to perform, at a minimum, the simple and fundamental tasks of interconnecting and protecting the semiconductor die and making it useful for interconnection at the next level.

In any process there are always opportunities to improve, reduce the number of process stages or reduce the cost of manufacture.