Micro joining - The only smart way forward

摘要

RESISTANCE WELDING ISN'T JUST MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY THAN LEAD-BASED SOLDERING; IT CAN ALSO PROVE A FASTER AND CHEAPER PROCESS TOO. July 1st 2006 sees the long awaited RoHS directives finally bringing the legislation into force, which bans the inclusion of lead greater than 0.1 wt% into any products. This legislation has a great affect on manufacturing, especially within industries that require solder to join their components. As a result these industries are looking into alternative joining methods, Traditional soldering methods are already being phased out in industries where greater control is required, such as medical, battery, automotive and aerospace. Micro welding is an environmentally friendly, flux free process and in many cases the actual heat input into a product is lower than with the solder process due to the shorter process time (typically in the region of 5-50 milliseconds). Soldering requires several hundred milliseconds to allow wetting and solidification and is not always straightforward to automate. Micro welding on the other hand is in most cases easy to automate and as mentioned previously will generally allow higher throughputs with greater precision and control.