An Investigation into Printing Miniaturised Devices for the Automotive and Industrial Manufacturing Sectors

摘要

The electronics market is divided into many segments each having its own challenges; but one theme that connects the electronics community together is a need for higher yield with lower costs. Or simply the manufacturing process needs to become ever efficient. Within the consumer sector miniaturisation is the watch-word and all eyes are on the 0.3mm CSP and metric 03015 components. Both of these devices will pose serious heterogeneous questions for High Volume Manufactures, especially if the current stencil thickness of 100 microns is required for standard technology. The Automotive and Industrial electronics sector which are not normally brushed with the challenges of miniaturisation have started to become connected to this demanding world. The reason for this is not through the consumer driver of increased functionality, but one of pure supply and demand economics. The demands for large foot print devices are decreasing therefore the unit price and scarcity is increasing; whereas smaller foot print devices are increasing in demand and availability and as a consequence the unit price and scarcity is reducing. For this reason Automotive and Industrial electronic manufacturers are now faced with implementing fine pitch devices due to availability and cost. The Automotive and Industrial electronics sector have several large obstructions when engaging with miniaturised devices: - the addition of large devices on the same product, harsh environmental concerns and safety/reliability demands. All of these issues require a highly capable heterogeneous solder paste printing process. This paper investigates a solution the Automotive and Industrial electronics community can implement to ensure a high yield print process in which fine pitch footprint devices can be printed alongside traditional larger footprint devices.