Dealing with ball-grid-arrays

Hakko has introduced its range of products to meet the requirements of today's complex soldering tasks including lead-free and ball-grid-arrays.

The FR and FX range come in blue and yellow and incorporate rapid heat technology combined with small footprints and ESD safe designs.

The FX-951 and FX-952 dual stations incorporate a supervisor control card to prevent operators adjusting settings, sleep functions to extend tip life, low temperature alarms, and 70 W composite tips that provide good thermal recovery enabling soldering at lower temperatures.

The ultra-light handpiece is complemented by a range of 84 tips including special profiles for soldering 0.5 mm fine-pitch gull-wing leads, J-leads, high thermal demand and surface mount rework. This is useful to companies forced to meet the European RoHS requirements of lead-free soldering.

Solder manufacturers are offering various alloys for this; however, the SAC (tin-silver-copper) alloy appears the most popular. This has a melting point of about 218°C, which is about 40 degrees higher than traditional lead-based alloys.

The increased temperature, combined with a lower wetting factor and a different joint geometry and appearance, can make the change a little daunting for the uninitiated.

Operators using 60/40 tin lead will be used to fast solder melt and good solder flow and changing to lead-free they could struggle to meet the requirements of the IPC-A-610 rev D, particularly without training.

The IPC-J-STD001D encompasses lead-free soldering and HK Wentworth can offer certification to this standard as well as the A-610 and IPC-7711/7721.

Currently, Australia does not have an RoHS type policy and, given the increased cost of raw materials as well as capital equipment investment, the change to lead-free will be on an as-need-basis.

This could lead to manufacturers running two alloys in parallel or using contractors already compliant. Either way, time is running out and making the switch is not something that can be done overnight. Also new from Hakko is the FR-801, FR-802 and FR-803; these replace the 850 and 852.

The FR-803 is a new concept for benchtop hot air machines providing three-stage temperature profiling with three-profile memory. It also uses the operator lock-out control card and a new element design ensures even heating at the nozzle, preventing hot spots.

The FX-301 lead-free compatible solder pot offers a rapid heat-up, precise digital temperature control and easy pot replacement, making it suitable for companies wanting to run different alloys. It also has four heating programs for various alloys, timer functions and an optional 75 mm pot.