Tag Archives: Patty and the Professor

SMT Workshop Pre-Test

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Folks,

Six months ago …

Patty had just finished an all day workshop on “Common Defects in SMT Assembly and How to Minimize Them.” The workshop seemed to go really well, and many of the 35 or so attendees thanked her for a great learning experience.

After most of the people filed out of the room, two approached her as she was disconnecting and packing her laptop.

“Dr. Coleman, that was a great workshop. But, I do have one question. You used a term all day that I wasn’t familiar with, ‘SAC’,” a 35-year-old process engineer commented to her.

While saying this, he presented his business card that referred to him as a “Senior Process Engineer.”

Patty was trying to recover from this shock, when the second similar looking fellow asked, “And what are ‘OSP’ and ‘eutectic’.”

After explaining these three terms and exchanging a few pleasantries, the two senior process engineers walked out of the room and bade Patty farewell. As the room became empty, Patty settled into a chair.

“How can this be?” she thought. She was stunned that people with enough experience to be called “senior process engineers” would not know these terms.

Today 6 AM …

Patty was jogging back to her house in Woodstock, VT, when she spied a beautiful red fox. Neighbors had reported seeing the fox numerous times. People believed that the fox was nesting. In addition, a black bear had been sighted by everyone in her family over the past few weeks. Add all of this to the family of deer and the rafter of turkeys in her neighborhood and it was quite an experience for Patty, Rob, and their sons.

The fox, however, created a new problem. Patty and Rob had bought their twin sons a Yorkshire puppy, Ellie, about a year ago. At 6 pounds she could be dinner for the fox, so, unfortunately, they could no longer let Ellie out by herself.

Figure 1. Ellie the Yorkie after a big day. Sadly she has to be watched when she goes outside of Patty’s house, due to the local predators.

By 7:30AM Patty was in her office. She was giving a workshop in two weeks at a local chapter meeting in Boston and decided to create a pre-test to give to the attendees so that she could assess their current knowledge. Patty planned on having the students grade each other’s exams and on working the exam in as a leaning experience at the start of the workshop. By assessing the results of the pre-test, she wanted to make sure she didn’t use acronyms they don’t understand, and to also explain topics that the students might not be familiar with. As she was working on the questions for the pre-test, Pete walked in.

“Hey, Professor C, how goes it?” Pete asked.

“I’m preparing a pre-test for the workshop I’m giving in a few weeks,” Patty replied nonchalantly.

“I remember you talking about doing it a month or so ago. Seems like a good idea to me,” Pete responded.

“I’m ,glad you approve,” Patty said wryly. “I just finished it. Do you want to take a look at it?” she continued.

Patty printed out a few copies and handed one to Pete. They both looked at it for a few minutes, in silence.

Finally, Pete commented sheepishly, “Aaa, Patty your joking, right?”

“Why do you say that?” Patty asked, a little annoyed.

“It’s just too easy. Everyone will get 100% and you won’t get any information,” Pete opined.

Patty then reminded Pete of her experience 6 months ago.

“OK. Maybe you have a point. But, I still think it’s too easy,” Pete concluded.

“I’ll tell you what. How about a bet? If the average pre-test grade is above 70%, Rob and I will take you and your new crush, Mary, out to Simon Pearce. If it is 70% or less, you treat us,” Patty teased.

“It’s a bet,” replied Pete quickly.

The Pretest:

  1. What does the letter “S” in SAC stand for?
  2. How much silver is in SAC305?
  3. What is the approximate melting point for SAC305 solder (+/- 4oC)?
  4. Solder paste is approximately how much (by weight) metal (+/- 5%)?
  5. What is not a current common defect in SMT?
    1. Head-in-pillow
    1. Pad cratering
    1. BGA Ball Matting
    1. Graping
  6. Which is a closest to typical stencil thickness?
    1. 5 microns
    1. 20 mils
    1. 5 mils
    1. 20 microns
  7. Which is closest to a typical lead spacing for a plastic quad flat pack (PQFP)?
    1. 0.1mm
    1. 0.1mil
    1. 0.4mm
    1. 0.4mils
  8. Which has finer solder particles, a Type 3 or 4 solder paste?
  9. What does OSP stand for?
  10. Place an arrow at the eutectic point of the tin-lead phase diagram below.

Epilogue (two days after the workshop)

Patty arrived at Ivy U and couldn’t wait to see Pete. She went to his office but he wasn’t there. Finally, she found him in the machine shop helping four students with a project that required some additive manufacturing.

“Hey, Pete! When are you and Mary going to treat us to our dinner?” Patty teased.

“Don’t tell me the average was less than 70%,” Pete grumbled.

“Forty-three point zero eight to be exact,” Patty punctuated.

Figure 2. The Pretest Scores

“Yikes!” Pete exclaimed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess you were right.”

“It really helped me to take things slowly and explain all the terms. I think I helped the students much more than usual,” Patty explained.

“Rob and I both agreed, we are ordering the most expensive meal that Simon Pearce has,” Patty joked.

At that Pete let out a deep groan.

Dr. Ron note: All of the events in this post are true. How would you do on the pretest?


Become a Part of Patty and The Professor!

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I have enjoyed writing the Patty and the Professor blog for about 10 years now. I’ve written about numerous real-life electronics assembly examples that I have encountered in my career, all disguised, of course.

To continue keeping things real, and to keep my readers involved, I am inviting you to submit an authentic story from your career. That’s right! You’re being invited to submit an idea, story, or experience that can be built into the Patty & The Professor series.

Your experience will help many other electronics assembly practitioners resolve their issues and avoid problems.

So, get your thoughts together, then shoot me an email at [email protected]. Share the details of your experience or observation. I may ask a few questions to help me comprehend the full story. Then, I will write up the segment and let you read it before posting. You will be credited, of course.

Bonus: You will also receive either a Dartmouth hat or coffee mug (similar to, not exactly like, those pictured below)!

Contact me if you are interested in submitting a story. I look forward to hearing from you!

 Cheers,

 Dr. Ron

The Professor’s second visit to ACME … continued

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.

“Well what should we do Professor?” John said weakly. 

“Clearly, not shut the line down over the lunch break,” The Professor responded quickly. 

“We can’t!” said John, “The operators are all friends and they count on having lunch together.” 

“How much are they paid per hour?” asked The Professor. 

“Ten dollars,” replied John. 

 “You can pay them $15 per hour and still make more profit if they keep the line running over the lunch break,” The Professor opined. 

“Fifteen dollars per hour for the lunch time or the entire 40 hour week?” John asked nervously. 

“For the whole week,” was The Professor’s reply. 

“I find that hard to believe,” John shot back.

“Consider this,” said The Professor. “Your line is up only 9.7% of an 8 hour shift, that’s only 47 minutes. Today you lost 95 minutes over the lunch hour. You may be able to increase your uptime to greater than 15% by keeping the line running over lunch. I modeled your business with ProfitPro3.0 cost estimating software. Your company will make millions more per year if you keep the lines running over lunch. I have worked with other companies to make this change; it is really easy with a 30 minute lunch period. If 5 people normally run the line, you have just one stay back during lunch. That way each person only misses the regular lunch break once a week.”

John thought optimistically, “There is such a thing as a free lunch.”

“Now, let’s talk about what we can do to double the uptime from the 15% we will get by running the lines over lunch,” said the Professor.

Patty listened to all of this in amazement. The Professor was helping ACME more than she thought possible.

Next steps? Yes, John will keep his job. But, what is The Professor’s plan to get uptime to 30% or more? And, we still haven’t learned where Patty will go to dinner.  Stay tuned for the latest.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Dr. Ron note:  As surprising as this may seem, this story is based on real events. The uptime numbers and improvements are from real examples. Any company that can achieve 35% or more uptime can compete with anyone in the world, even in low labor rate countries. Sadly, few companies know their uptime or have an urgency to improve it.

Best Wishes,



The Return of Patty and the Professor: Uptime Part 2

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Folks,

For the next few weeks I plan to repost some of the first Patty and the Professor episodes. As I visited several facilities, some of them in other industries, I found that uptime is as vital a topic as ever. Although these facilities were tracking a few metrics, uptime was not one of them.  I estimated they were little better than ACME in the following vignette. Let’s all be committed to measuring and improving our processes uptimes. Now on to Patty and the Professor.

Two weeks passed quickly and The Professor returned to ACME. Patty met him at the door. “Professor, it’s great to see you,” Patty said with enthusiasm. “We collected the uptime data in real time on a laptop, no one has seen that results yet. We wanted it to be a surprise,” said Patty. The Professor suggested that he go out on the shop floor to observe the manufacturing activities until shortly after lunch. He pointed out  that his observations may help to understand the uptime results.

The morning seemed to drag for Patty, she was very anxious to see the resets of the uptime data. She bet Pete a dinner for two that the uptime would not be more than 50%. If she wins, Pete and his wife will treat her and her boyfriend Jason to dinner at the restaurant of her choice.

Around 1:30 p.m. The Professor suggested that he was ready for the meeting. Patty had written a simple Excel macro to perform the calculations for the uptime. She only had to push a button and he whole room would see the result in a moment, as Patty connected her laptop to a projector. There was tension in the air, friendly wagers had been made, but the entire process team realized that their reputation was on the line.

When the number emerged on the screen, John, the manager’s face became ashen. Pete’s visage was redder than two weeks ago. John thought, “I should be fired. How could I manage this team for five years and not know that our uptime was only 9.7%.” Patty was thinking about her choice of restaurants.

“How can we be so bad?” John asked The Professor. The Professor responded, “The good news is that there are tremendous opportunities for improvement. After observing the operations out on the floor this morning, I think we can get the uptime to greater than 40%.” Pete shot back, “You’re kidding, only 40%?”

“I’ve only seen two operations that have greater than 45% uptime, and I’ve been to over 150 facilities worldwide,” answered The Professor.

“Where do we start?,” asked John.

“How about lunch?” beamed The Professor.

“We just had lunch!” Pete groaned.

“No, no Pete,” The Professor chuckled, “I mean how lunch is handled out on the line. Lunch costs the company more than 1½ hours of production in an eight hour shift. That’s nearly 20% of the entire shift.”

Now John was a little agitated. “Professor, lunch is only 30 minutes. We purposely have a short lunch period to avoid the line being down for a long time,” John said with a note of annoyance.

“John, this is true, but I watched what the operators did. Lunch is supposed to start at 12 noon, but the operators turn the line off at 11:40 a.m. They don’t get back to the line until 12:40 p.m. and it takes them more than 30 minutes to get the line running again. Today, the line was not running until 1:15 p.m. It was down for 1 hour and 35 minutes,” stated The Professor.

John thought again, “Yes, I should really be fired.”

Will John keep his job? What restaurant will Patty choose for dinner? What should be done about lunch? Where are all of the other hours lost? Stay tuned for the answers to these and other questions.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

The Return of Patty and the Professor

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Folks,

I teach a course at Dartmouth on manufacturing processes: ENGM 185. In this course, I use many of the chapters from “The Adventures of Patty and the Professor.” This book started as a series of posts on this blog and the posts ended up being gathered into the book. It’s hard to believe that the first post was nearly 10 years ago.

I think most students that have read “The Adventures of Patty and the Professor” have a sense that the vignettes in the book are exaggerated, even though I point out that I have attempted to make them as close to real events as possible. Recently, one of my grad students, Amritansh (Amro) Varshney, had a chance to see some of the real world of manufacturing. After Amro returned to Dartmouth, we chatted and he shared that not only do the stories convey the sense of how poor some manufacturing operations are run, but, in some cases, the realities are worse!

In light of this epiphany, I decided to repost some of the original episodes from the book for a new generation of readers. As you share Patty and the Professor’s experiences, remember they are strongly based on real events. I hope you enjoy the “Adventures!”

Business was good at ACME. Even in these challenging times, the company’s three assembly lines could not keep up with demand. John, the manager of the assembly lines, decided to request the funds for an additional assembly line. A member of his team, Patty, suggested he might want to consult “The Professor,*” before getting a new line. The Professor taught a course on line balancing that Patty took at the SMTAI conference last summer. Line balancing is an important part of optimizing productivity in electronics assembly. A balanced line ensures that the component placement process, usually the “constraint,” is the fastest possible by assuring that each placement machine spends the same amount of time placing components. If any machine is waiting for the others, assembly time is being wasted. In a sense, line balancing is an application of Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints. John remembered that when Patty applied what she learned from The Professor, throughput increased 25%. Unfortunately, Patty did not attend The Professor’s other class on “Increasing Line Uptime.”

John decided to have a chat with Patty about The Professor. “Patty, why do you think I should consult with The Professor, about getting a new line?”

“Well John, perhaps with some effort to improve our uptime, we wouldn’t have to buy another line,” said Patty.

“Patty, that’s a good point,” said John.

Patty contacted The Professor and he agreed to fit ACME into his busy schedule. Upon his arrival, The Professor was given a tour. As part of the tour he was shown the process that ACME used to minimize changeover time between jobs. The Professor appeared to be impressed. After the tour, The Professor asked if a brief meeting could be held with the engineers and managers to discuss the situation.

“What is the average line uptime?” The Professor asked the assemblage. There was some hemming and hawing, finally Pete, the senior process engineer replied, “I’d say at least 95%, we work our fannies off out there.” There was a murmur of agreement from the 9 or 10 people in the room. Finally John spoke up, “Professor, what is your definition of uptime?” The Professor responded, “Simply the percent of time an assembly line is running.” Pete again responded that 95% was the right number.

The Professor asked for some production metrics and performed some calculations on his laptop. In a few moments he commented, “From the data you gave me, I estimate that your average line uptime is about 10%.” Upon hearing this, Pete became red in the face, especially after Patty whispered in his ear, “I told you so.” The noise in the room became so loud that John was concerned he might have a riot on his hands. The Professor asked to speak and John, in a booming voice, asked for calm.

“Let’s not become angry, perhaps my calculations are off. Why don’t we measure the uptime for a few weeks to be certain.”

“How do we do that?” asked Pete, his face still crimson.

“Each day one process engineer will go out to the lines every 30 minutes. If the line is running, he will put a 1 in an Excel® spreadsheet cell, if the line is not running a 0 will be entered,” responded the professor.” It was agreed that this will be done and The Professor will be back in two weeks.

Will Pete’s red face return to normal? Will the line uptime be 95%? Will Patty and Pete ever be on speaking terms again?  Stay tuned on May 27 for the next episode.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

* The Professor, as he is affectionately called by his many students, is a kindly older man who works at a famous university. Few know his real name. The Professor is an expert in process optimization.

Use an SMT Pre-Test Before Presenting a Soldering Workshop

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Folks,

Let’s see how Patty is doing, it’s been a very, very long time …

Even though Patty and her husband Rob both worked at Ivy University, they seldom drove in together. It was just too difficult to organize their schedules so that it would work out. So, as Patty was driving in to Ivy U, she was listening to the last chapter of Ron Chernow’s biography of U. S. Grant. Her timing was excellent, since she, Rob, Pete, and the Professor were having their monthly book club meeting. Rob, Pete, and the Professor were always recommending books about World War II or the Civil War. Because of this trait, she groaned every time it was the three “boys” turn to suggest the next book. But, she had to admit that she always enjoyed the books much more than she thought she would. She especially liked a book Rob discovered, called A Simple Solder. Patty found this true story, about a young boy in the German army in World War II and how he survived to tell the tale, fascinating. She would never tell Rob, but she read it three times.

When it was Patty’s turn she made sure to avoid those military topics. Recently, she proposed another one of Chernow’s biographies on John D. Rockefeller. She also suggested  iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood–and What That Means for the Rest of Us by Jean M. Twenge. This book convinced her and Rob to dramatically limit “screen time” for their 9-year-old twin boys.

As she approached her parking spot, the audio book on Grant finished. She was a bit sad, as she had enjoyed this book as much as any. Patty had the impression, from her high school history classes, that Grant led the Union to victory over Robert E. Lee only because he had superior forces, weapons, and supplies. Chernow’s book clearly dispelled that notion. Grant was a great general. In addition, he was an effective and honorable president, if a little too naïve and trusting to avoid numerous scandals among his subordinates.

In a few moments, they met in The Professor’s large office. After they finished their book club chat about Grant’s biography. Patty had a favor to ask.

“Mike Madigan asked me to give a three-day workshop on SMT 101 at one of ACME’s recently acquired facilities. He said he felt the technicians and engineers weren’t very knowledgeable. I’m having trouble deciding at what level to aim the workshop,” Patty began.

“You mean like for beginners, intermediate, or expert?” Pete asked.

“Yes,” Patty responded.

“Well, you should develop it in a logical sense, starting with what soldering is, discuss flux and solder paste, then stencil printing, component placement, reflow, test, etc,” Rob added.

“I agree with Rob’s outline, but you need to find out the current knowledge level of the students,” The Professor suggested.

“I once gave an eight-hour seminar on SMT Defect Modes and How to Fix Them. The workshop was advertised as for SMT engineers and technicians with intermediate experience. At the end of the workshop a person raised his hand and asked an unsettling question,” The Professor continued.

“And the question was?” Pete teased.

“Professor, you have used the word ‘SAC’ many times, what does ‘SAC’ stand for?” The Professor responded.

In unison, Patty, Rob and Pete groaned.

“That’s my concern! At which level do I aim the workshop? If I shoot too low, it might insult people. If I shoot to high it might go over their heads,” Patty responded.

“OK! So, how do I structure the workshop, not knowing the skill level of the students?” Patty asked a little frustrated.

“How about a pre-test?” The Professor suggested.

“OK! But how many questions?” Rob asked.

“It needs to be short, yet comprehensive,” The Professor suggested.

“Seems like a contradiction,” Pete grumbled.

“I think The Professor is right. Look at it this way, let’s say you want to assess if your 14 year old nephew knows much about The Civil War. Ask him three or at most five questions and you can determine if he does,” Patty suggested.

“How about some examples?” Pete asked a bit dubious.

“I’m getting it. How about when was the war fought, who was Robert E. Lee, what is the significance of Appomattox Court House?” Rob chimed in.

“OK, I see you point. If you know two or all three, you probably know a lot, one or less and you don’t know much,” Pete responded.

Patty then suggested, “OK let’s develop a list of ten SMT Pre-Test questions.”

After about 20 minutes of back and forth, our team of four converged on these 10 questions.

SMT Pre-Test

  1. What does the letter “S” in SAC stand for?
  2. How much silver is in SAC 305?
  3. PWBs are coming off of the final component placement machine at a rate of one every 20 seconds. The PWBs are 20cm long and should be placed with at least 4cm of space between them. What must the reflow oven belt speed be to accommodate this cycle time?
  4. The starting temperature is 25°C. It needs to be 145°C in one minute. What heating rate is needed, in °C/s, to achieve this temperature?
  5. About how much does silver cost per troy oz.? (+/- 30%)
  6. Which is a closest to typical stencil thickness?
    • 5 microns
    • 20 mils
    • 5 mils
    • 20 microns
  7. Which is closest to a typical lead spacing for a plastic quad flat pack (PQFP?)
    • 0.1mm
    • 0.1 mil
    • 0.4mm
    • 0.4 mils
  8. Which has finer solder particles, a Type 3 or 4 solder paste?
  9. What does OSP stand for?
  10. Place an arrow at the eutectic point of the tin-lead phase diagram below.

Would you like to try the pre-test? The answers have to be what you know without looking anything up. Send me your answers at [email protected]. The first person to get 100% will get an item of memorabilia signed by Patty, Rob, Pete, and The Professor.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

Calculating Confidence Intervals on Cpks

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Let’s look in on Patty, it’s been awhile.

Patty was looking forward to sleeping in.  Normally she was up very early, sometimes before 5:30 am, after usually getting to bed too late, so she was looking forward to an alarm set at 7:45 am. The kids were off from school and Rob was taking them skiing, so all agreed a 7:45 am wake up time was reasonable.  Since she had no early meetings, her scheduled 9 am arrival at her Ivy University office was also in the cards.

Patty was sleeping soundly when she heard her seven-year old twin sons shouting, “Mom! Dad! Come quickly.”   At the same time, their two-year old beagle, Duchess, started barking.

Her heart pounding, Patty raced to the racket now being produced by this energetic trio.  As she arrived she saw her sons and Duchess looking out of their back window to see a beautiful female deer eating from their bird feeder, just 30 feet away. The entire family was involved in a bird counting exercise and had noticed, several times, that the bird feeder was “wiped out” overnight. This mystery was now solved.

The entire family agreed that it was hard to be angry at the doe, as deer are such beautiful creatures.

Figure 1.  A Female Deer at the Bird Feeder at Patty’s House

 

It was 6:15 am and it didn’t seem to make sense to go back to bed.  So, Patty stayed up and was off to Ivy U in less than 30 minutes.

Patty had a rather light week as she had guest speakers for her two lectures.  However, she was sitting in for one of the engineering school’s senior professors later in the day.  This fellow prof had asked her to sub for him as he was called to an emergency meeting overseas.  Her topic was manufacturing processes; one with which she felt very comfortable.  But, she had to admit to being a bit nervous sitting in for one of Ivy U’s most famous professors.

As was her usual practice, Patty checked her email first.  After going through the first 5 or 6, she saw an email with the subject header, “Ivy U Professor Wins Prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.”  As she opened the article, she was stunned as she saw a photo of the professor for whom she was substituting later in the day.  The article went on to explain that this prize was like the “Nobel Prize” for engineering.

As she finished her emails she was relishing the thought of having a less hectic day and week ahead.  Maybe she would even have time to read the Wall Street Journal during a relaxing lunch.  Suddenly, her phone rang, startling her a little.  She picked up the receiver to hear a familiar voice.

“Professor Coleman, this is your most faithful student Mike Madigan,” Madigan cheerfully said.

Madigan was CEO of ACME at large electronics assembly contractor. Patty worked at ACME before becoming a professor at Ivy U. Her husband, Rob, and sidekick, Pete, were also ACME employees, but were now all at Ivy U.  Pete was a research assistant and Rob was just becoming a research professor.  Although they all enjoyed their time at ACME, they were much happier at Ivy U.  All three had a part-time consulting contract with ACME and Madigan was typically their main contact at their former employer.

“Mike! What’s up?” Patty said cheerfully.

“We are evaluating a new solder paste and I’m concerned we might make a mistake if we switch,” Mike responded.

“How so?” Patty asked.

“Well, we agreed that consistency in the transfer efficiency (TE) of the stencil printed deposits was the most important criteria,” Madigan began.

“That sounds reasonable as most of our past work has shown that a consistent TE is a strong determinant of high first-pass yields,” Patty responded.

“Right! But the difference between the pastes is only two percent. The old paste has a Cpk of 0.98 and the new paste 1.00,” Mike went on.

“I sense there is more to the story,” Patty suggested.

“Yeah. The new paste has a poorer response to pause,” Madigan said.

“Yikes!” Patty almost shouted.

Patty had shown, time and time again, that poor response-to-pause in the stencil printing process can hurt productivity and lower profitability considerably.

“My sense is the two percent difference in Cpk, might not be significant,” Mike suggested.

“Mike, I think you are on to something. What printing specs were you using and how many samples did you test?” Patty asked.

“The lower TE spec was 50% and the upper 150%. We tested 1,000 prints,” Madigan answered.

“Let me do some homework and I’ll get back to you,” Patty said.

“One problem. Can you get back by 3 pm today? The new solder paste supplier is coming for a meeting at 4PM and is pressing us,” Mike pleaded.

“OK. Will do,” Patty said, sighing a bit.

“There goes my somewhat relaxing day,” she thought.

It was a good thing she had already prepared her lecture and that it was scheduled for 4:30PM.

For several hours Patty thought and searched through some textbooks on statistical process control.  Finally, she came upon the solution to the problem in Montgomery’s Introduction to Statistical Quality Control.

“Perfect!” she thought.

She did finish early enough that she could read the WSJ over lunch, marveling, as always, that she was the only person her age that enjoyed reading a real newspaper.

She called Madigan at 3 pm.

“Mike, I think I have your answer.  I found a formula to calculate the confidence intervals of Cpks,” Patty started.

“And the answer is?” Madigan asked expectantly.

“The Cpk 95% confidence interval on the new paste is 0.95 to 1.05, however the old paste is 0.93 to 1.03,” Patty began.

“So, even I can sense that they aren’t different,” Mike commented.

“Yes, since the confidence intervals overlap, they are not statistically different,” Patty agreed.

Figure 2. The Confidence Interval of the Cpk on the New Paste is 0.95 to 1.05.

 

They chatted for a while and Madigan asked if Patty could join the first 20 minutes of the meeting by teleconference.  It was a bit close to her lecture start time, but she agreed.

Patty had met Madigan’s son at West Point when she visited there to be an evaluator for a workshop two years ago.  She decided to ask how he was doing.

“Mike, how is your son doing at West Point?” she asked.

“Thanks for asking. He is now a Firstie and was in the running for First Captain, but he just missed it.  It’s a good thing he takes after his mom,” Madigan proudly responded.

“Wow! That’s great,” Patty replied.

“I have to admit though, my wife and I are a bit nervous. He has chosen armor as his branch and there is a good chance he will see combat sometime in his career,” Madigan responded with a bit of concern in his voice .

They chatted for a while more and Patty was touched to see so much humanity in Mike Madigan.  He seemed much changed from his gruffness of earlier years.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

As always, some of this story is based on true events

 

PCs, Tablets, and Mobile Phones are not Dying (and Will Continue to Present Voiding Challenges)

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Folks,

Looks like Patty and Rob are on another adventure.  Let’s look in ….

Patty had been driving the same 2001 Saab station wagon since college. It had been a great car, but, with almost 200,000 miles on it and its outdated safety features, perhaps it was time for a change. Both her and Rob’s parents had been bugging them about getting a new, safer vehicle for a while. Finally, for her birthday, both sets of parents chipped in to give her a significant down payment on a new car.  They even suggested which specific car she should get. It was a car with one of the best safety records, not an insignificant concern for doting grandparents.  The manufacturer has a goal of no deaths in its automobiles by 2020.

As Patty and Rob went shopping, they were overwhelmed by the features that 2016 autos have. Detections of cars in the “blind spot,” warnings when the car leaves the lane, warnings and prevention from backing in to something, reading the speed limit signs, pairing to smartphones, the internet, and on and on.

“Patty, these aren’t cars; they are computers that you can drive,” Rob commented.

“Actually this car has 13 computers,” the salesperson chuckled.

“What is the soonest we can take the car home?” Rob asked, expecting it to be 3 or 4 days.

“You can take it home in an hour,” the salesperson affirmed.

In an hour, Patty and Rob were driving home in their new car, amazed at its capabilities as a “computer on wheels.”

“Rob, look at this. As we pass the speed limit sign, the speed limit is shown on the speedometer,” Patty exclaimed in amazement.

They stopped in their driveway and played with the car’s features for 30 minutes, streaming music from their smartphones, connecting to the internet, and changing many modes on the dashboard display.  It was more fun than their first time playing with a tablet.

Figure 1.  Patty and Rob’s new car has 13 computers

Two days later, it was Monday and Patty, Rob, and Pete had been asked to see the Professor for a brainstorming session.  Recently, as Patty’s career had skyrocketed, she had been working with the Professor less and less.  The trio agreed to meet in Patty’s office so they could head over to the Professor’s office together.

“Hey, this is just like old times!” Pete exclaimed.

“I agree,” added Patty, “I miss some of the adventures we used to have.”

The professor welcomed them in.

“I hope all of you had a chance to review the material on the many links that I sent you,” the Professor began.

They all murmured that they had.

They reason I asked you to come is that I am going to be interviewed on national television, The topic is, ‘The Death of PC, Tablets, and Smartphones.’ I thought you all might be able to help me prepare.

They all though in unison, “Us help the Professor prepare?!”

“What are your thoughts on the ‘Death of the PC,’” the Professor asked his humble mentees.

“One of the links you sent has shows PC sales declining,” Rob said.

Figure 2. PC sales peaked around 2011 and have been declining since then.

“But, do you think it portends the end of PCs?” the Professor asked.

“This is something I have thought about ever since you sent us the links.  I think the ‘death of the PC’ people are missing some key points,” Pete replied.

“Such as?” the Professor encouraged.

“When I was a teenage we got an IBM PC XT. It had a 10MB hard drive. We replaced it in three years,” Pete began.

“Why did you replace it?” Patty asked.

“It didn’t have enough memory or processor speed for the new games.  The new PC had a 200MB hard drive. We kept that one for about 3 more years and the cycle repeated,” Pete answered.

“And what about today?” the Professor asked.

“My parents have a six-year-old computer. They recently complained they needed to upgrade it because the audio plug is worn out, some keys on the keyboard are intermittent, and it doesn’t have enough USB ports. No problem with the memory; it has 6GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive,” Pete answered.

“So, it did not run out of memory or computer speed?” the Professor asked.

Patty interrupted, “I remember the Professor and I talking about ‘the constancy of memory metrics’. The argument was that a photo is about 1MB, a song 5MB and a movie about 5,000MB.  These metrics are approximately constant. Initially, the size of these metrics overwhelmed early computers, but now these memory metrics are small compared to the capability of current technology. The impact was that early computers had to be changed often, because people wanted to store more photos, songs, etc., but now, with computers having 1TB of memory, getting a new computer for this reason is not so compelling.”

“Maybe with the exception of some new video games, but admittedly this is a small part of the market,” Rob added.

“Well, is the PC market dying then?” the Professor prompted.

“No way!” Pete jumped in. All of us use our PCs for hours each day.  Am I the only one longing for my PC when I answer an email from my smartphone?” Pete asked.

They all chuckled.

“So, it seems that we are concluding that, today, the performance requirements for PCs, mostly laptops, have leveled off and upgrades are needed less frequently. These upgrades are often driven by mechanical failures such as connectors and keyboards, not necessarily the need for more memory or faster processor speed.  It is natural then to expect sales of PCs to level off and even go down some as, in addition to these points, the market has reached saturation.  Everyone who needs a PC has one,” the Professor summed up.

“Yeah, and the 238.5 million sold last year is not really small potatoes,” Rob added.

“What about tablets? Are they going away?” the Professor asked with a mischievous smile.

“Again, the data show a downward trend, but I’m not a believer that they are going away either,” Pete commented.

Figure 3.  Tablet sales are declining.

“I think a similar thing is happening here,” Patty mused. “Tablets are so powerful that there just isn’t an incentive to purchase one frequently. We have an iPad II that we bought in 2011 that we still use, although it doesn’t run some of the newer games.”

“And they sure are popular with our boys. We have to limit the time they spend on them,” Rob added.

“What about people using large smartphones instead of tablets?” Patty asked.

“That has definitely cut into tablet sales. Some of the new smartphones are so big that they are almost comical.  They are as big as some of the mini tablets,” Pete opined.

“Professor, I thought one of the links you sent was fascinating: 4.6 billion mobile phone users in a world of 7.3 billion people!” Rob exclaimed.

“I have a friend who works in humanitarian engineering in third world countries. He tells me that people in some places he visits, will go without food to have a cellphone. In the past, communicating with relatives 60 miles away was a one week commitment of time, because of the primitive transportation. Now, they can do it instantly,” the Professor shared.

“What about the fact that there are as many mobile phones as people on the earth,” Pete exclaimed.

“I guess some people have more than one,” Rob suggested.

“So are mobile phones dying?” the Professor asked.

“I think it is the same argument. When I was starting out at ACME, I had a mobile phone that could take photos, but the quality was really poor. By 2010 the photo quality was good, today it is excellent. I hardly ever take a camera with me, my smartphone photos are excellent,” Patty said.

“So, I’m guessing you don’t need to get a new smartphone as often because the technology has now stabilized, and improvements are only incremental?” the Professor asked.

“Precisely,” Patty responded.

“I think we agree; PCs, tablets, and mobile phones are here to stay, but their sales will be flat or slightly down due to market saturation and technology maturity.”

“Here, here,” Pete chuckled.

“Where do you see electronics growing?” the Professor asked.

Patty and Rob then shared their exciting experience in buying a new car and all of the electronics it has.

Pete then chimed in, “Don’t forget the internet of things (IoT).  I think this is the future of electronics growth, but it is not one device.  The number of devices is innumerable – and growing! And I think it will help electronics grow even faster than in the past.”

They discussed IoT for quite a while and then Rob had a thought.

“Bottom terminated components and especially QFNs will be with us for a long time as they are in all of these devices.  So the work we did for Mike Madigan on voiding should have a lasting impact,” Rob posited.

“Patty, you need to do something about Rob. He’s becoming too serious,” Pete teased.

Everyone laughed at that and got up to leave after what they all felt was a fruitful meeting.

Best wishes,

Ron

Using Solder Preforms to Reduce Voiding in BTCs

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Folks,

Let’s see how Patty and the team are doing on their presentation on voiding for Mike Madigan …

Patty was kind of down. Like millions of others, she and Rob watched, in horror, as Jordan Spieth had his meltdown at the 2016 Masters Golf Tournament. Some newscasters considered it the biggest meltdown in golf history, but Patty considered Rory McIlroy’s 2011 and especially Greg Norman’s 1996 meltdowns to be worse. She felt the NY Daily News did the best job of comparing the five worst Masters meltdowns. She agreed that Spieth would surely recover, certainly better than Ken Venturi in his famous collapse in the 1956 Masters. She was surprised that so many newscasters often seemed to not put history in as strong a perspective as it deserved.

As she sat in her office, she was reminded that she needed to finish her part of the presentation that Mike Madigan needed on minimizing voiding. Her topic was, “Using Solder Preforms to Minimize Voiding.” To her, voiding appeared to be the hottest issue in electronics assembly.  Especially voiding under bottom-terminated components, or BTCs. Rob and Pete were coming by in a few minutes to review her progress. Just as she finished, they were at her door.

“Hey, Professor! What’s the scoop on using solder preforms to minimize voiding?” Pete asked, clearly teasing by calling her “Professor.”

They all chuckled a bit and Rob added, “Yes, Professor. Let’s hear it.”

Patty began, “Remember a few years ago the standard approach to using preforms, to minimize voiding under BTCs, was to use a flux-coated solder preform and place it on the thermal pad on the PWB after printing a minimum amount of solder paste?”

“Sure! A great paper was written on it, by some of the folks at Indium Corporation,” Rob said.

Then Pete added, “I gather there is a new approach?”

“Well, think about the motivation to find another technique,” Patty replied.

“A specialized preform needed to be made, it needed flux coating and placing it was a bit of a challenge,” she continued.

“So, what’s the new technique?” Rob asked.

“Well, I chatted with Tim Jensen. Although the original technique is still used, a preferred technique using 0201- or 0402-sized solder preforms has been developed.  The preforms are purposely placed off center so that the BTC is at an angle.  This angle allows the solder paste volatiles to escape.  Since these preforms are a standard size, and not flux-coated, they will typically be less expensive and easier to handle in the assembly process,” Patty elaborated.

“How well do they work?” Pete asked.

“They work quite well. Look at these data,” Patty replied. (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Preforms of either 0201 or 0402 reduce voiding by up to 50%.  Note that the standard deviation is also tighter by using preforms.

“Looks like the 0402 preforms do a little better than 0201s,” Rob commented.

“Yeah! And using two of them instead of one seems to help a little,” Pete added.

“It’s also striking how the preforms tighten the data up. Look at how much the standard deviation is reduced by using them,” Rob added.

The trio spent the next several hours collating all their PowerPoint slides into one 45-minute presentation. Patty then scheduled a meeting with Mike Madigan to review the entire presentation.

Epilogue: Patty, Rob and Pete reviewed the presentation with Mike Madigan using WebEx.  Mike implemented the recommendations after reviewing them with his critical customers.  By using the best solder paste, making minor modifications to the SMT processes, and using solder preforms where appropriate, ACME was able to reduce voiding to less than 10% in all products and less than 5% in most.

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

 

 

To Minimize BTC Voiding, Start with the Right Solder Paste

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Let’s see what’s up with Patty ….

Patty was just dropped off at O’Hare airport after finishing a 3 day workshop on Lean Six Sigma statistics, design of experiments, and statistical process control. Interestingly, the students were lawyers. In recent years more and more service-based organizations were adopting lean Six Sigma and it was a long time since Patty had taught such a workshop to engineers. She noted that although the lawyer’s math skills were a bit rusty, they were very good listeners and picked up the math behind lean Six Sigma topics very quickly.

After paying the cab driver, she entered the terminal and went to see an agent. She was early enough to get an early flight home, so she had called the people at the online ticket agency during the cab ride. They said the change fee would be over $300, she felt that was just too much to pay. She was delighted to see that it was only $75 at the terminal.

She looked at her paper boarding pass and saw that she had more than two hours, just enough time for a relaxed lunch at Wolfgang Puck while she read USA Today. Patty was the only person her age that she knew who enjoyed reading a paper newspaper, she guessed that she picked the habit up from her dad.

The two hours went by quickly and she was standing in line waiting to board the flight to Boston’s Logan Airport. She had now been at Ivy U for a few years and traveled much less than when she worked at ACME. She had forgotten how stressful and unpleasant traveling was. As she stood in line, the man in front of her put his smartphone on the scanner and the scanner could not read the QC code. He and the agent fumbled for a while before they got it to work. This was another place where, in her opinion, paper was still king.

Patty got on board and settled into her middle row seat. She groaned a little bit at how uncomfortable and cramped it was. Patty was reminded of what her dad used to say in situations like this; “I know it is a bit uncomfortable, but just think what the 49ers went through to get to California,” he would tease.

After takeoff, she turned on her laptop. She absolutely had to send some emails, so she signed on to the onboard WiFi. She got sticker shock when she saw that it cost $18.95!  Even though Ivy U would pay for it, the high price galled her.

After she finished the emails, a wave of fatigue swept over her and she needed a break.  She chuckled to herself when she thought of a recent event. She had taken two of her best teaching assistants (TAs) to lunch and the conversation somehow came to discussing people who hid Jews from the Nazi’s in World War II. Patty mentioned to her two young protégés about an excellent book and movie she read and saw as a teenager, The Hiding Place. The story is about Corrie Ten Boom and her family and how they hid, and hence saved, many Jews from the Nazis in Holland during WWII. Although the movie was made before she was born, it was shown at Patty’s church every few years, for the new sets of youngsters who came along. Patty mentioned to her two superstar TAs that the film was produced by Billy Graham’s organization.

“Who is Billy Graham?” they both asked in unison.

Patty struggled to keep her composure as she explained who he was. How could they not know this?  She decided to examine the situation a bit further.

“OK, you two. Who was Mickey Mantle?” Patty asked.

The youngster’s both looked at each other.

“We have no clue,” they chuckled.

Patty though she would try a few more, “Nikita Khrushchev?”

Nothing.

“Roy Orbison?”

Nothing.

Patty started humming a few bars of Orbison’s most popular song.

“Oh, Pretty Woman,” the boys said in unison.

Patty thought to herself, “Each of these young lads are the best student in every class that they take and yet they don’t know these ‘celebrities’?”

The next day Patty arrived at her office early to meet with Rob and Pete to discuss how the presentations that they were making for Mike Madigan on voiding were coming. Patty had arrived so late the night before, that Rob was already asleep. She did not see him in the morning as it was her turn to get the boys ready for school and he was off early to get in his 90 minutes of exercising. So, they had no chance to discuss the progress of the presentation.

“Pete, your presentation of BGA voiding is terrific. How is my hubby doing on BTC voiding?” she chuckled as she looked at Rob.

“I feel like I’m going to get yelled at ’cause I didn’t do my homework,” Rob said sheepishly.

“Yikes! We only have a few days,” Patty responded. “And I have yet to do my part on using solder preforms to minimize voiding,” she went on.

“I’m only teasing. I have quite a bit of info,” Rob said.

“We have been out of the mainstream for a while and one thing is for sure, voiding is the number one issue among assemblers today.  So many people are assembling QFNs and are struggling with voiding. Voiding with some solder pastes can be over 50% of the area,” Rob went on.

“Wow! With 50% voids, think of how poorly the heat is being transfer away for the BTCs,” she looked at Rob and chuckled. “Remember, ‘BTC’ not ‘QFN,’ Patty went on.

“Yes ma’am,” Rob jokingly replied.

“Can you imagine the effect on reliability and field issues with so little heat being removed? The ICs inside the BTCs must be frying” Pete added.

“Voiding at this level has got to be really costly,” Patty mused.

“One of the things that really helped me was that I found quite a few experiments on voiding,” Rob added.

“What were some of the key points?” Pete asked.

“Well, as you might expect, the solder paste is typically the most critical part of the process. Some pastes have voiding lower than 10% with others above 50%,” Rob replied.

“What about the process?” Patty asked.

“Well, the reflow profile can be very important, as is controlling the PWBs and components. But, with the best pastes, it has been found that you can control the voiding content even if you can’t change the reflow profile and the PWBs and components have some issues,” Rob responded.

“Look at the x-rays of poor and good voiding between two pastes,” Rob said.

“What a difference,” Patty and Pete said in unison.

“What about the stencil design and venting?” Pete asked.

“Chris said that stencil design for venting is not as critical as once thought, although a window pane design is usually used,” Rob replied.

Figure 1.  The window pane design for the stencil is used to permit venting.

“So it sounds like starting with the best solder paste solves 90% of the problem and adjusting the process, say with the right reflow profile, helps refine the result,” Patty summed up.

With this Rob went off to put the finishing touches on his PowerPoint® slides for his part of the presentation, while Patty started working on her part of the presentation on using solder preforms to reduce voiding.

Two weeks later.

Patty’s mom and dad came for a visit on a Sunday. Her mom had graciously offered to bring a complete Sunday dinner. Patty, Rob and the boys were grateful for the delicious meal. As they began to eat, Patty shared the story of her best students not knowing Billy Graham, et al.

“But, what was even more surprising was that I ended up asking 10 or 20 more students and only one had ever heard of any of these four ‘famous’ people,” Patty sighed.

“It’s your age,” Patty’s mom replied.

Thirty years old was not that far in the rear view mirror for Patty and she really didn’t consider herself old.

“These youngsters were born in the late 1990s, a generation after these people were prominent,” her mom went on.

“Mom’s right.  Do you know Billy Sunday, Ty Cobb, Glenn Miller, and Trotsky?”  her dad asked.

“Who?” Patty asked.  And then she chuckled, getting the point.

After a brief pause, she said, “I do know who Trotsky was; tell me about the others.”

Cheers,

Dr. Ron

As always, this story is based on true events.