Lead-free soldering turns up the heat on PCB carriers

摘要

In the past,selecting a solder pallet material often required trade-offs between performance and manufacturability.A new glass-epoxy composite now offers both easy machining and long pallet life.Not surprisingly,manufacturers are embracing this new material option,that slashes the cost of pallet production while helping them meet the demands of soldering processes made hotter than ever by the banishment of lead.In wave soldering processes,molten solder fuses the leads of electronic components to the underside of a printed circuit board(PCB).In this process,a pump produces a wave of molten solder that wets exposed leads as PCBs travel across the solder tank.The boards are carried on solder pallets that are specifically designed for each electronic assembly.The designs ensure that PCBs can be exactly positioned on the pallets and that only areas requiring solder are exposed to the solder wave.