SMT Equipment

PCBs for High-Reliability Applications

Company Information:

Providing production and prototype, SEC offers advanced technologies like LED thermal management, heavy copper, PTFE for RFMW, open and internal cavities and blind and buried vias that are certified to a diverse set of industries.

Romulus, Michigan, USA

Consultant / Service Provider, Manufacturer

  • Phone (734) 941-8100
  • Fax (734) 941-3707

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PCBs for High-Reliability Applications

PCBs for High-Reliability Applications

Name:

PCBs for High-Reliability Applications

Category:

Assembly Services

Offered by:

Saturn Electronics Corporation

   

PCBs for High-Reliability Applications Description:

Printed Circuit Boards ("PCBs") should be viewed as electronic real estate. Essentially, the reliability of the components that, combined with the PCB, make up your product are only as good as the foundation upon which they are assembled.

The reliability of a PCB depends primarily on the following: Copper Plating Thickness. Typically, IPC Class II requires a minimum of 0.8 mils copper plating in the holes. However, for high reliability applications that are in the field over the long term, a minimum of 1 mil of copper plating is required. This ensures hole wall integrity throughout the assembly process as well as in continued operation in the field. The key to ensuring a minimum plating thickness of 1 mil is to reduce plating variability as much as possible. Standard manual plating lines can variability across a single panel of +/- 40%. Thus, if a certain point on a panel measures 1 mil of copper plating thickness, there is a distinct possibility that other areas can have as low as 0.6 mils of copper plating, thereby affecting the long-term reliability of the PCB.

Saturn has designed and built it's own automatic copper plating line with the intent of minimizing variability by optimizing every parameter there is to copper plating.

The primary factors include:

  • We only plate panels one-high, as opposed to 2-3 panels high.
  • Anode-to-anode distance is 28 inches (maximum distance allowable for plating).
  • Water-submerged positive cathode contact.
  • Chemical-submerged anode bars for constant positive contact.
  • Eductor system that utilizes a high-volume chemical flow parallel to the panels instead of air to accomplish chemical agitation.
  • Mechanical agitation to allow chemical to flow through holes.
  • Dual sided rectification to equalize copper plating from one side of the rack to the other.
  • State-of-the-art rectifiers (two per rack) with 0.5% maximum ripple effect.
  • Positive Thumbscrew panel contact to racks.

PCBs for High-Reliability Applications was added in Apr 2008

PCBs for High-Reliability Applications has been viewed 365 times

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