The Effect of a Solder Mask and Surface Mount Adhesive Types on a PCB Manufacturing Process

Category: Adhesives and Dispensing
Post Date: July 20, 2004
Author(s): James A. Serenson, Jr., Loctite Corporation, and Steve Marongelli, Universal Instruments

Description
A high volume manufacturer of PCBs had attempted for many years to locate an adhesive that was robust enough to meet their manufacturing needs. This proved to be a challenge because they needed the adhesive to accommodate a wide range of different dispensing equipment and board designs. The two key performance criteria required from the adhesive were dispensability and adhesion. If the adhesive could not dispense consistently at high speed (40M+ dph), the process throughput would be unacceptable due to excessive maintenance and down time. If the adhesion was not acceptable on all of the different solder masks which were utilized in their various board designs, the chip loss during subsequent processing would result in excessive rework. The primary objective of the study was to identify an adhesive that would dispense robustly on, and have acceptable adhesion to, the six different solder masks utilized across all their production lines. A second, long term objective of the PCB manufacturer was select one solder mask which would be utilized for all their PCB designs.

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