The NEDME team is very pleased to welcome back Tony Lentz as one of this year’s presenters. Tony is a Field Application Engineer with FCT Assembly, and will discuss “Voiding and Ways to Mitigate Voids.” Tony was kind enough to give us a preview of his presentation, and a sampling of his current work, in advance of the show.
What has been one of your favorite work projects in the last few years?
My favorite work project over the last few years was a paper that I wrote on Water soluble solder paste: Wet behind the Ears or Wave of the Future. I presented this at NEDME 2016. I really enjoy working on new solder paste products and quantifying their performance.
Tell us about a change you see coming in the industry, and a way in which companies should be positioned to meet it
There is a change that is slowly coming on how we classify no clean fluxes and quantify cleanliness requirements for assembled circuit boards. There are a few IPC committees and several testing companies working on this. I believe that cleanliness requirements will become more stringent and will likely include new testing methods. Assemblers should keep an eye on the IPC standards for changes over the next couple of years.
What is one thing that you hope people will take away from your presentation?
I hope that people take away the message that voiding is a complex issue, but it can be influenced through solder paste, stencil design and reflow profiling.