Solder jet printing becomes indispensable for STI

Article Type: Industry news From: Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Volume 22, Issue 4

While Surface Technology International (STI), the UK market leader for contract electronics manufacture, was evaluating one of the MYDATA’s innovative MY500 solder jet printers, it secured an order for a project that involved a special and particularly hard to solder component. Conventional screen solder printing could not handle the job, but the MY500 coped with ease.

As an existing user of MYDATA MY12e and MY100DX14 pick-and-place machines,STI had been kept fully informed about the new MY500 solder jet printer, which completely eliminates the need for stencils, and ultimately the company expressed an interest in evaluating this new technology for itself. As a result,MYDATA arranged for a MY500 to be supplied to STI on a try-before-you-buy basis.

At this point, STI was awarded the contract to manufacture an assembly that included a special custom component, one of the characteristics of which was that, for successful mounting, it needed a large deposit of solder on one pad,and a much smaller deposit on an adjacent pad.

The usual answer to problems of this type is to use stepped stencils, but in this case, STI found that the difference between the amounts of solder needed and the closeness of the pads made a solution of this type impossible. The company decided, therefore, to try the MY500. As this allows total control of solder paste deposition on a pad-by-pad basis, it provided a complete solution to the problem, and allowed STI to reliably produce faultless boards.

To ensure that it would get the best from its new machine, STI was provided with comprehensive training by MYDATA. The operators report, however, that the MY500 is so easy to work with that the training was needed only for them to be sure that they were, in fact, making full use of the machine’s potential.

For further information, please visit at: web site: www.mydata.com