Plating Ductility: Why Elongation Beats Thickness Plating ductility is the ability of electroplated copper to stretch without cracking, and it is measured as elongation in a tensile test. It matters more than thickness in every case where a barrel has to survive thermal cycling, because a thick deposit that is…

Copper Roughness on PCB: 6 Effects From Adhesion to Loss Copper roughness is the microscopic texture of a copper surface, measured in fractions of a micrometre. It exists for a reason: a rough surface gives the resin something to grip, so the copper and the laminate stay together through drilling,…

Stencil Tension Loss: 4 Signs to Retension Stencil tension is the force that keeps the mesh or the foil flat inside its frame, and it is the reason a printed deposit separates cleanly from the aperture wall. A tensioned stencil behaves like a drum skin: the squeegee deflects it, and…

Copper Foil Pinholes: Catching Them Before Lamination A copper foil pinhole is a small perforation through the rolled sheet, usually a few micrometres across, that survives lamination and becomes a break in a conductor. On an inner layer it can leave an open trace after etching; on an outer layer…

PCB Board Support Tooling: 6 Rules for Printing and Reflow Board support is the system that holds a panel flat while it is printed, populated and reflowed. On a thick, small board it is almost unnecessary; on a thin panel with a large area, the lack of it shows up…

Vacuum Printing: Filling Small Apertures From Below Vacuum printing applies a pressure difference across the stencil so that paste is pushed into the aperture from above and pulled into it from below at the same time. The vacuum is applied through the support under the board, and it acts during…

PCB Plasma Treatment: 6 Controls That Raise Surface Energy Plasma treatment exposes a board to an ionised gas that reacts with whatever is on the surface, removing organic contamination and leaving chemically active groups behind. The result is a surface with higher energy that wets, bonds and plates more reliably…

Component Loss on SMT Lines: 5 Accounting Rules Component loss is the difference between the parts issued to a placement line and the parts that leave it on shipped boards. On a dense product the number is small in percentage terms and large in absolute terms, because a board can…

SMT Feeder Setup: 6 Checks That Stop Placement Errors Feeder setup is the part of SMT preparation that gets the least attention and causes a large share of placement defects. A feeder that is loaded slightly forward of the pick position, or a tape that sits a fraction of a…

Tack Time: How Long Paste Holds Components in Place Tack time is the period during which a printed paste deposit is sticky enough to hold a component after placement. It begins when the board leaves the printer and it ends when the paste can no longer resist the small forces…