Hand soldering is an essential part of every manufacturing company for reworks and maintenance even though they are using automated soldering in the production. The automation help keeps the company achieves a high quality soldering because of the high demand for quality products. To ensure efficiency, these products are carefully inspected and when there are some faults, hand soldering is needed. Electronic boards nowadays consist of densely packed resistors, ICs, and other electronic components which make it more complex. In this manner, proper training is needed for those who do the hand soldering to prevent expensive damage.
So that the components can be easily soldered on the printed board’s surface, these printed boards are usually made out of materials that have a good dimensional and thermal stability. They are also sandwich with other boards along with plated through-holes which provides connectivity between the layers. For technician it is important for them to have knowledge on printed circuit boards so that it will not be difficult for them to locate the parts when they are conducting rework and maintenance.
Standards play a vital role in soldering. Every manufacturing company complies with standards to see to it that every product is of quality. The IPC standard is what most companies use when it comes to their soldering, inspection, and manufacturing processes. There are three classes of products and each components of the class are soldered following the same standard, meaning that it should have uniform in appearance. This will help the inspector spot any faults. Classes are name as such: Class 1 which contains general products, Class 2 which requires longer life span and better performance, and finally Class 3 are critical systems that are use in harsh environments.
Leaded and lead-free alloys are some typical category of solder. Among these categories the most common is an alloy of lead and tin. But these types of soldering alloys are slowly being phased out because of environmental concerns and to be replaced by lead-free alloys. But lead-free solders has some slight problems such as it needs a much higher temperature to melt and requires much extra care when it comes to soldering tiny pads and leads as well as it cost more than tin and lead. Lead-free soldering also uses different tools.
If you like to enhance your skills in soldering or you want to learn the techniques then you should consider undergoing some training. There are soldering courses that are offered by training centers. They offer such course in fashion with IPC standards. You will really learn a lot and also get your certification after you pass the course.
Lowell Gladly an online writer recommends Blackfox Premier Training and Certification if you want to learn more about soldering and if you like to become an IPC instructor.. This article, Some Things About Soldering is released under a creative commons attribution license.