K&S Launches New Gold Wire Engineered for High-Density Packaging

Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Inc. announces a new gold wire, branded Formax™, which is designed for all types of stacked-die and multi-tier applications.  This new bonding wire offers highly accurate and consistent loop profiles, providing higher wire bond yields.  The Formax wire improves linearity and stability, while achieving higher molding results.

Jack Belani, senior vice president for K&S Packaged Materials and Corporate Marketing, stated,” Our new Formax product is the next-generation in wire technology, which was developed from our proven and growing family of gold bonding wire.”  He continued, ”Formax is the next engineering step from Radix and Radix Plus, offering higher strengths as well as lower heat and affected zone ranges.”

Customer data has shown that Formax delivers higher, accurate and more consistent loop profiles in a wide range of complete packages with higher yields.  Additionally, this wire has versatile looping capabilities, with loop heights of less than 3 mil to over 16 mil, with wire span up to 320 mil using a 1-mil wire diameter wire.

MicroScreen’s Web Site Now Available in Multiple Languages

MicroScreen LLC has announced improvements to its web site at www.microscreen.org.   The site offers visitors easier access to up-to-date needed technical information on stencils and screens. 

In addition to English and Spanish, the site is now also available in Chinese.

For those who speak and write Chinese, the coordinator is Tian Rong.  She has been with MicroScreen for over one year and specializes in design and editing for stencil fabrication.  Tian is also trained to work with screen data and order entry. Her experience with MicroScreen’s products is an advantage to both our customers and MicroScreen.

Photo Stencil Develops Lead-Free Instrusive Reflow Solution

Photo Stencil has developed a new process – “Intrusive Reflow of Lead-Free Solder Paste.” The resulting paper outlines a procedure that increases efficiency for process engineers by eliminating the wave soldering process altogether.

Dr. Bill Coleman, vice president of technology for Photo Stencil wrote the paper and ran tests to improve the printing process for lead-free materials. In the intrusive reflow process, solder paste is printed on and around the through-hole area, as well as in the through-hole itself. Through-hole devices are placed along with the SMT devices and processed together during reflow.

One objective of the study was to maximize the amount of solder paste printed into the through-hole (% hole fill). With proper squeegee speed and squeegee angle, 100% hole fill was achieved for 63 mil thick boards and 85% hole fill for a 93-mil thick boards with a 6 mil thick stencil. This resulted in good top and bottom fillets and continuous solder fill around the pins with a 6 mil thick stencil for both 63 and 93 mil thick boards for resistors, DIPs and four row header arrays.

“Results of the study are very encouraging since, with proper pin-to-hole ratios and screen printer set-up, a 6-mil stencil is successful in providing good lead-free through-hole solder joints,” explains Dr. Coleman.