Photo Stencil aquired the AMTX E-Blade electroformed squeegee blade from Xerox. It is said to improve printdeposition, quality, uniformity and consistency. With a rigid, low-friction, hard-nickel edge, the blade provides cleaner prints, reduced stencil wear and less material waste.

"The electroformed E-Blade demonstrated the lowest squeegee pressure of any other squeegee blade I have tested for both SMT and wafer bumping printing," said Rick Lathrop, technical service manager of surface-mount materials at Heraeus. Heraeus recently completed a study on squeegee blades. "With lower print pressures come all of the benefits of reduced understencil wiping frequency and increased stencil life. The lack of paste scooping in large apertures for wafer bumping can only enhance bump coplanarity for automotive and WLCSP applications."

The blade also addresses issues caused by Pb-free printing. Pb-free solder paste requires higher squeegee pressures for a clean wipe of the stencil. The E-Blade prints at 33% of the squeegee pressure of other popular squeegee blades. High squeegee pressures result in "smear mode" printing whereas low squeegee pressure allows "sheer mode" printing.

Photo Stencil, www.photostencil.com