Wave Soldering Concerns for Surface Mount Assemblies

For over 30 years, wave soldering has been the most popular and most economical method for mass soldering of electronic assemblies. For conventional circuits, this is a mature technology. Training, proper board design, process control during board fabrication, assembly and soldering and, finally, an awareness of the need for solderability have resulted in very high manufacturing yields in some companies with the associated high quality and much improved profits which result by doing it right the first time. With the introduction of surface mount technology, the same concerns need to be addressed. However, due to the smaller size of components and higher densities, new problems arise. This paper presents some of the concerns encountered in wave soldering of surface mount assemblies.