Purdue's ECET department has supported surface mount technology (SMT) in its labs for over 10 years. In that time the department has expanded its teaching of the design and assembly of devices incorporating surface mount components (SMCs) from design basics and simple manual assembly in one undergraduate class, to more complex designs and manual & automated assembly in two electronic manufacturing courses, one undergraduate and one dual-level. The students in the department routinely use Cadence electronic computer aided design (ECAD) software for the design and analysis of circuits and for the design of printed circuit boards (PCBs). The boards are fabricated by a commercial PCB fabricator, then assembled in one of two laboratories the department has with assembly equipment suitable for both manual and automated assembly of SMCs. This paper will briefly discuss the design concepts unique to SMT devices and the manual and automated assembly technologies suitable for use in teaching laboratories. SMCs from chip resistor and capacitor components through fine-pitch quad flat pack ICs can be manually soldered and desoldered from PCBs with equipment costing no more than
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