Surface Mount technology

By

Aimal Khan Achakzai

I- Objective
  Working on Surface Mount technology and their production line

II- Motivation
Surface mount technology (SMT) are used in a growing number of commercial and
industrial products. Due to their small size manufacturing, rework, and repair can be difficult and are best performed using
specialized techniques specific to this technology. Learning these techniques will help you succeed when working with these
small components.

III- Introduction
Introduction: Surface mount technology is a technology in which the components are
placed onto the electronic circuits (PCB). These circuits are first printed and then the components are mounted on them
with the help of automatic machines known as Pick and Place machines. This technology has currently replaced the
through hole technology in which the components are first put into the holes of the printed PCB through wires and then
are soldered onto the board. Both technologies can be used on the same board for components not suited to surface
mounting such as large transformers and heat-sink power semiconductors.

Usually the size of an SMT component is much smaller than the through hole component because it may have very fine
pitched and smaller leads or may contain no leads.
 Why Use Surface Mount Technology?
SMDs have improved performance over through-hole components due to their smaller size, shorter internal leads, and smaller
board layouts. These factors reduce the circuit’s parasitic inductance and capacitance. SMDs can also be more cost effective
than traditional through-hole components due to the smaller board size, fewer board layers, and fewer holes.

SMDs can also be easier to replace than through-hole components on multilayer boards. This is because it is very difficult to
heat the long hole on a multilayer board, but much easier to heat just the pad and component terminal of an SMD on the
surface of a board. 

Operational Machines for the SMT production line

Following are some Machines that are currently being used for the production lineof SMT in NIE.

1.Tunaco 2. Paraquda 3.Cobra 4.Oven 5.Scorpion

And following are some Equipment that we use in SMTPL Machines.

1.     Smart Feeder 2.  Hyq -Feeder 3. Vibratory feeder

IV- Operational Machine:

1.         Smart Feeder
Feeder is the most important thing regarding SMT P. It is the thing through which
machine pick and place the components on PCB. Feeder Support to the Machines allows 8x4mm and 12x4mm. 8x4mm
feeders have two lines means that two components can be kitted in it and 12x4mm feeder have one line means one component
can be kit on it. For big components there is a big smart feeder which allows 16x8mm to 24x8mm tapes.

2. Hyq –Feeder
HyQ-Feeder are built in a very compact way in order to maximize the capacity of feeder on
placement machines. The active tape pull-back system as well as the integrated cutter ensures the reliability in the series
production. Essemtec invented these hyQ-Feeders to fully exploit the performance of the Paraquda and Cobra placement
machines. With an indexing time of only 60 ms, they increase the machines' placement speed by more than 25 percent and
allow for four components to be picked up simultaneously.

The intelligent feeders can be programmed easily with radio barcode readers - either on the pick-and-place machine or at a
remote feeder setup station. The integrated LED-display informs about the current feeder status.

Available for different tape sizes. One feeder for two tape sizes (16-24mm, 32-44mm, 44-56mm). Integrated tape pull-back
system actively prevents jamming Slim feeder design for high amount of feeder per machine hyQ-feeder are recognized
automatically by the placement machine High-speed infeed for quattro-pick Intelligent, electrical high speed feeder system –
no 3rd party supplier Barcode based rigging (reduction of change-over times / avoidance of setup errors) Offline Setup with
Feeder Offline Station ESD protection
 Figure: Hyq-feeder

3.        Vibratory Feeder

  These are the feeder for the components which are in sticks so mechanical vibrations are
used to advance the components and vibrations are set according to size and weight of components.

4.         Tunaco Printer

Printing is the procedure in which solder paste is deposited on the pads of PCB. Printing
requires the desired stencil and the solder paste

There are some main parts of printer which are given below.

- Sequgee

These are two metallic wipers that drag the paste over the stencil and solder paste is applied on the pods of PCB.

- Camera

 There are two cameras inline under the stencil, one is used to locate the fuducials on the PCB and one camera is used to
locate the fuducials under the stencil.

- Stencils:

Stencils the metallic sheet which vary according to the design of circuit of PCB means any new PCB will have its own
stencils. It has holes according to the pads of PCB.

- Solder paste:

Solder paste is actually a mixture of small solder balls and is mixed with the flux. It contains leads and some does not, Solder
paste having lead have shinny connections at the end and others have dull connections at the end.

Selection of solder paste is very important step and it is done according to the design of PCb. Height of solder paste depends
on the thickness of stencil.
5.   Oven profiling:

R0400-FC has four zone of temperature and the temperature of these zones is set according to the characteristics of solder
paste .Every solder paste has it own character tics which depends upon its components.

Figure: Oven RO400

Oven Profiling is usually done a profiler but it can also be done by thermocouples. Oven profiling is done to check the actual
temperature of the zones of the oven.

6.        Pick and place Machines

There are two pick and place Machine In National institute of Electronic, Islamabad Pakistan i.e. COBRA and PARAQUDA
and these Machines are connected to the offline station LAN and worked together on same job simultaneously .Paraquda have
capacity up to 15,000 CPH

Figure: Paraquda-Pick and place machine

and have four spindles to pick and place while cobra is new model of paraquda and have eight spindles and have pick and
place capacity up to 21,000CPH
 Figure: Cobra-New Model picks and place machine

1- CAD Data

These two above machines work on CAD data which comes from the PCB manufacture that contains the X,Y axis of each
comments and it contains all the information for machine that which components is to be placed where on the PCB.

2- Recipe:

 It is usually the visual display of PCB on the machine and this option is only in ESSEMTEC software through which we can
check the placements of components on real time.

3- Programming:

Essemtec is very easy to understand and can interact with the machine through which machine is taught that which
components belongs to which packages and placements of components are verified in the option.

IV- Operational working:

The operation of Machine is to first Place the PCB on Printer for soldering paste and then placed on these above two machine
that have incredible high speed .The machine then picks the components from the feeder or trays then its head comes to the
bottom camera machine inspect the components that either components is right or wrong. Its legs are straight or not if there is
any problem regarding the components machine discard that components in the garbage bin and again pick the components
and repeats the whole procedure. This whole process is done by the procedure image processing in which a profile of
components is stored in the memory of machine and every time machine compare the image of that components with that if it
compares with that image it is place to the PCB otherwise discarded. After placing the components on PCB then it move for
next step is to process the paste into soldering with Oven machine and then it on for going to next step is to cover the PCB by
layering the protecting layer from dispenseing machine by dymax and last step is to move for processing the PCB by
protecting the dymax layer by ultra violet light.

V- Conclusion:

Working with SMT can be challenging, and mastering this technology takes a little patience and practice. Like the transition
from point-to-point wiring to printed circuit boards, it is similar to traditional through-hole technology but requires some new
skills. Also placing the components by pick and place machine to PCB is like traditional by mounted components by hand but
requires new skills.