Or how the metaverse will save us, one contorted axiom at a time.

Ambrose Bierce, of sainted memory, is known for a Devil’s Dictionary, a cynic’s primer on human behavior, laid out in Noah Webster style.

Pity he strayed into hostile territory in bandit-infested Northern Mexico in 1913, never to be seen again. Maybe someone lurking in the sagebrush took offense at imagined slights in the Dictionary. People are so thin-skinned.

Pity also that he lived one hundred years too soon. Bierce missed his moment. Obfuscation has exploded, rivaling worthless college degrees (or maybe because of them). A euphemistic pandemic with no known vaccine, for which we need a new dictionary, has infiltrated our lexicon. Straight talk in professional settings is frowned upon, covertly if not overtly. Blunt talk is often memorable and career-threatening. Verbal mush is benign and soon forgotten. As the author of the Bartleby column in the Nov. 20, 2021, edition of The Economist noted, concerning contemporary biz-speak, “People rarely say what they mean, but hope that their meaning is nonetheless clear. Think Britain, but with paycheques. To navigate this kind of workplace, you need a phrasebook.”

How prepared is your organization?

Here we are in January 2022 with a future fraught with more uncertainties than any other during my six decades in the PCB, IC fabrication and assembly industries.

Business is strong despite shortages in labor and parts. Prices are rising, dramatically in some cases. Profits are being squeezed. Rapid government changes in travel restrictions and worker conditions seem endless due to the continuing evolution of the pandemic.

Supply chains are under pressure from a variety of events and circumstances. These include some brief power shutdowns at plants that produce wafers and PCBs in China, chip and other component shortages, shipping issues with a backlog of over 100 cargo ships carrying, for example, container loads of copper-clad laminates anchored off the Southern California coast waiting to be unloaded. The battery industry is gobbling up copper supplies. Major consumers are buying into chipmakers who can guarantee their needs. This affects those who cannot, causing them to scramble for new sources.

Not only are ICs in short supply, especially for automotive needs with the increase in the manufacture of EVs and hybrids, but substrates are needed for their mounting and connection to the outside world. As a result, major automotive companies in Japan, the US, and Europe have curtailed production in several factories to the tune of several million vehicles in the coming year.

Automating paste application saves time and money.

Increasing productivity through process automation, software intelligence and multitasking capability are the foundation of Industry 4.0. Executing manufacturing tasks with exponentially more efficiency and precision ultimately drives cost lower and quality higher. This is proven across operations within numerous industries. As one of the critical sub-processes in SMT manufacturing, stencil printing is an area where substantive gains in quality and cost-efficiency can be made. Often overlooked is the smart factory approach to solder paste replenishment, though it is integral to a true closed-loop system.

Obviously, in order to print, material must be on the stencil in front of the blade. Currently, the predominant method for achieving this condition is manual application. A line operator physically scoops paste out of the jar and places material on the stencil. This seems like an appropriate use of operator resources, as they are positioned on the line anyway, but, in the “little and often” methodology for screen printing processing, this approach is counter to process stability, optimized throughput and cost-efficiency. Manual application of paste could be carried out more frequently to comply with “little and often,” although that would require a machine stop, which may impact throughput and, therefore, cost. Conversely, the operator can apply a large volume of paste on the stencil to accommodate more prints, which may alleviate some of the throughput concern, but could have an adverse effect on process stability.  

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X-ray can’t catch all failures.

This month we we look at solder joint separation from pads with dye and pry testing, which is of course intended, and in FIGURE 1 shown as a perfectly good solder joint. (Well, until I covered it with dye and broke it, that is.)

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