-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueComing to Terms With AI
In this issue, we examine the profound effect artificial intelligence and machine learning are having on manufacturing and business processes. We follow technology, innovation, and money as automation becomes the new key indicator of growth in our industry.
Box Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
AIM Solder Talks Innovations to Address Assembly, Reliability Issues
December 7, 2015 | Barry Matties and Stephen Las Marias, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
David Suraski, executive vice president at AIM Solder's assembly materials division, sat down with us at productronica 2015 to discuss the latest industry trends and customer challenges facing the solder industry, and innovations that are helping customers address their issues. Suraski also talked about reliability issues, and how the company is addressing them.
Barry Matties: David, please start with a little bit about AIM Solder.
David Suraski: AIM Solder is a leading global supplier of materials to the electronics industry, specifically solder materials. Within solder materials, the product line consists of solder paste, liquid flux, bar solder, and wire solder. We also sell some epoxies, under fills, cleaners, and pre-forms.
I help to lead AIM’s electronics assembly division. We define electronics assembly as anyone who is assembling a circuit board. Basically, our materials are what enables the components to adhere to a circuit board.
We're a global manufacturer. Our headquarters are in Montreal, Canada. We have facilities in the United States, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, and Poland, and we have technical support personnel and other sales offices throughout the world, including India, Philippines, Singapore, and Brazil.
Matties: How many employees are in your organization?
Suraski: About three hundred in the manufacturing division.
Matties: With regard to your customers, what sort of demands do they come to you with?
Suraski: More and more, they're increasingly relying on their suppliers. First of all, there are product demands. Obviously, in electronics, everyone has always been talking about things getting faster and things getting smaller. That puts a lot of burden and requirements on the materials themselves. A solder paste that used to print a certain pitch several years ago could not be used for the very-fine pitch devices now. There are many requirements on the materials, from everything from wetting to reliability and everything in between, and that requires constant innovation.
We have a very aggressive R&D program. Once the right products are in place, we offer a great deal of support as well. We have more technical support personnel than we do salespeople. We find that's a key to not only winning, but maintaining business. Our support people work with our customers on a regular basis to ensure that they can use the product properly, that they improve their throughput, that they solve any issues that they may be having, even if they're unrelated to our products, and they have the capability to embrace new technologies. For example, going from 0402 to 0201s to 01005s. We want to fix problems before they happen.
Matties: I'm glad you brought up problems. We recently conducted a survey about failures, and the largest area of failure tends to be with solder joints.
Suraski: Yeah, the solder guys always get blamed for it.
Matties: Maybe you're not blamed for it, but it's your product that they're having a difficult time getting 100% quality from.
Suraski: Right, that's true, and the solder joint is critical, of course. Issues with solder joints can be because of the process, the circuit board, or the component, and of course it can be caused by the solder itself. Our job is to become experts in all of those areas. To be able to, first of all, analyze what's going on if there is an issue, and then come up with good practical solutions to our customers.
Matties: If a manufacturer wants to ensure quality, the only way to really do it is through inspection. It doesn’t matter how robust their processes are, because there are so many variables; the defects can happen at any time for any reason, so you have to inspect. Is the goal to get rid of solder? How do we mitigate the amount of failures?
Suraski: People have been talking about alternatives. We're decades away from having everything completely embedded, for example, so there has to be some joining process. Solder remains the best way to join, because of its thermal and electrical characteristics and because it can self-correct component placement errors. It can also be reworked; you can solder and then if necessary you can de-solder without damaging the assembly. This is different than, say, a conductive adhesive, which is very difficult to take apart once it's put together. As long as joining needs to be done, there is going to be soldering. If you get the right products and processes in place, you can have a very repeatable, robust process.
Inspection is going to be important, and there are different types of inspection, but if you're attentive a couple of steps before that, and doing it right, and getting the right support from suppliers, then you can avoid most of those issues.
Matties: What is the advice you would give a fabricator or an assembler?
Suraski: That would be to focus on the process. Get the right products in place. Some perform 100% inspection, some do zero inspection. It really varies depending on their needs, requirements, or whatever they happen to be building. Incoming inspection is very important, as well, to make sure the components you're using are right for the process. We see that a lot of issues are related to the components.
Matties: It's about all the steps prior to where the solder meets the board or the joint.
Suraski: If you have a bad component, no matter how good your solder is, it's not going to work. If you have good parts going on, solid repeatable processes, then you can have a robust process, no matter how complicated it is.
Stephen Las Marias: You mentioned about the quality of the products and the parts coming in. What about if the applications are in really harsh environments, for instance, in aerospace or automotive?
Suraski: That often comes down to the alloy and the flux residue. We work with several automotive manufacturers, for example, and part of it comes down to design. You need the geometry of the solder joint itself to be correct for the application.
Some alloys are better in certain conditions. There are different lead-free alloys, and some are very good for vibration. Some are very good for thermal shock, so it's choosing the correct alloy for that particular application. It's a matter of the supplier working with the manufacturer, in most cases.
Another contributing factor to reliability is the flux residue itself. It’s really our job to develop flux residues that are inert, and be confident we are not going to harm the product after it's produced, no matter what kind of condition it's in.
Page 1 of 2
Suggested Items
Indium Experts to Present on High-Temperature, Lead-Free Solder Paste and High Reliability Liquid Metal Alloys Poster at ECTC
05/16/2024 | Indium CorporationIndium Corporation Research Associate Kyle Aserian will deliver a presentation at the 74th Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC) on May 31, in Denver, Colorado.
Indium Experts to Present at Electronics in Harsh Environments SMTA Conference
05/13/2024 | Indium Corporationndium Corporation Technical Manager for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Karthik Vijay, will deliver a technical presentation and Indium Corporation Senior Technologist, Dr. Ronald Lasky, will deliver both a workshop and technical presentation at the Electronics in Harsh Environments SMTA Conference on May 14-16 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Connect the Dots: Designing for Reality—The Pre-Manufacturing Process
05/08/2024 | Matt Stevenson -- Column: Connect the DotsI have been working with Nolan Johnson on a podcast series about designing PCBs for the reality of manufacturing. By sharing lessons learned over a long career in the PCB industry, we hope to shorten learning curves and help designers produce better boards with less hassle and rework. Episode 2 deals with the electronic pre-manufacturing process. Moving from CAD (computer-aided design) to CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) is a key step in PCB manufacturing. CAM turns digital designs into instructions that machines can use to actually build the PCB.
AIM Solder Signs Shinil Fl Ltd. as New Distributor for Korea
05/08/2024 | AIM SolderAIM Solder, a leading global manufacturer of solder assembly materials for the electronics industry, is pleased to announce a new distribution partnership with Shinil Fl Ltd., a prominent supplier of technological solutions in the SMT and semiconductor sectors.
Indium Corporation to Showcase HIA Materials at ECTC
05/07/2024 | Indium CorporationAs an industry leader in innovative materials solutions for semiconductor packaging and assembly, Indium Corporation® will feature its advanced products designed to meet the evolving challenges of heterogeneous integration and assembly (HIA) and fine-pitch system-in-package (SiP) applications at the 74th Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), May 28‒31, in Denver, Colorado.