First and foremost, everyone here at MicroType Engineering hopes that you are staying safe and healthy through the wild times that we are going through.
While we have done our best to maintain constant uptime throughout the quarantine, we did have a small shutdown. Using this time to our advantage, we went to work expanding our electronic circuit board assembly line to a larger space next door. This has more than doubled our assembly space, allowing us to better serve our clients.
For a deeper look at our decision-making process around assembly equipment, see our article on whether you should buy a pick and place machine.
New upgrades are on the way!
We also plan within the next month to acquire a new oven and selective soldering machine.
The oven that we are going to be getting is a Heller 1800EXL. It is a large eight-zone (eight on top, eight on the bottom) oven with 2 cooling zones (two on top, two on the bottom). This is in contrast to our current Heller 1500, which is a five-zone oven.
Why does the number of zones matter you may ask?
The number of zones and the length of the oven are the two most important specifications for a surface mount assembly process. The more zones an oven has, the more control you have to “shape” the heating profile of the oven. When you increase the number of zones, you increase the amount of “steps” that you can set the different temperatures to!
This is incredibly important when dealing with high-density and lead-free boards. With high-density boards – especially with large inductors or capacitors – you need to allow the components ample time to heat up. You also need to supply enough energy (heat) to the board to reach the reflow temperature. With lead-free circuit board assembly, you only have around a 5c-10c range to heat the board! Too cold and the solder doesn’t reflow, but too hot and you destroy sensitive components. While we have been able to solder challenging boards with our current oven, the new 1800 will allow us to be more consistent regardless of the panel size. For more on how we continue improving precision, see our article on enhancing precision and quality in our assembly process.
Selective Soldering Process: The Benefits for THT Assembly
Up until now, we have focused on surface mount technology (SMT), with through-hole technology (THT) parts being hand soldered. Our new selective soldering machine will enable us to automate the entire soldering process, ensuring consistency. A selective soldering machine is an incredibly versatile machine. It has a tray that holds a board while a small solder fountain moves underneath.
This fountain goes across all the THT parts on the board, safely and quickly soldering them. The big advantage of this as compared to a wave soldering machine is that a selective soldering machine can be used on double-sided boards. You also typically don’t need to make custom trays to hold each board. We are going to be getting an EBSO SPA 400.
Here at MicroType Engineering, we are constantly evaluating and improving our circuit board assembly services. We are fully back to 100% capacity and do not foresee any further COVID related shutdowns. Please contact us for a quick quote for any type of PCB assembly. Whether you need a single prototype PCB assembly or a production run, we have you covered.
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