Quest for Reliability

February 05, 2021

Quest for Reliability: Here We Go (Virtual) Again

Santa Claus may not have granted a Christmas wish of in-person conferences, but there's still much to be gained from a virtual format. Eric Camden explains.

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December 15, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Put Your Operators in the Driver’s Seat

There are countless ways to optimize equipment and material to increase the quality and reliability of electronics. One part of the process that should receive an equal amount of time and attention is staffing and training, which is this month’s topic. Eric Camden examines the impact of operator proficiency and hiring people who are naturally inquisitive.

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October 05, 2020

Quest for Reliability: What’s Lurking in the Shadows?

This month, Eric Camden focuses on contamination relocation—a term he mostly uses when testing a PCBA that has gone through some sort of localized cleaning process after a manual or selective soldering operation. He also highlights localized cleaning that is performed correctly and incorrectly and the impact on cleanliness and reliability.

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September 02, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Reliability Starts at the Bottom

It is much cheaper to perform product-specific reliability testing before the product goes into the field. Eric Camden shares some testing recommendations based on failure analysis, as well as lessons learned from a few of our customers over the years using case studies and data on failed units.

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June 01, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Correlating COVID-19 With Reliability?

I submit this month’s column from my secure bunker while safely—and smartly, if I may say so myself—practicing social distancing. The word quarantine is more “popular” than ever in that I hear it upward of 4,562 times per day. Before COVID-19, the first thing that popped into my mind when I heard the word “quarantine” was the cages in the receiving area for non-conforming products or similar spaces for built hardware that doesn’t pass some sort of inline test.

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February 03, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Big Trouble Comes in Tiny Packages

When it comes to making consumers happy and electronic assemblers miserable, nothing achieves both quite like miniaturization. With our ever-increasing demands to house a full-size movie theater with surround sound and limitless digital storage in the palm of our hands, the only way for CMs to respond is with miniaturization (and cursing—lots of cursing). In this installment, I’ll revisit the history of shrinking packaging and lessons learned.

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May 20, 2020

Quest for Reliability: New Solder, Same Old Testing

Solder is inarguably one of the required building blocks for electronic assemblies and, apart from a few exotics, every assembly in the world has it. When it comes to meeting the lead-free requirement, opinions and historical reliability data are not taken into consideration. Eric Camden explores testing and reliability related to solder.

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April 14, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Improving Reliability for Free

Eric Camden has seen more than a few factories make the move to use more and more automation that has indeed improved production numbers but has done very little to address cleanliness and reliability. In this column, he offers up a few easy steps you can take to reduce risks.

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February 12, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Sunshine and Circuit Boards

IPC APEX EXPO may be over, but this column by Eric Camden serves as a great introduction to IPC standards. If you've been thinking about getting involved with manufacturing and assembly standards but weren't sure how to go about it, this column is a must-read for you.

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January 02, 2020

Quest for Reliability: Old Dogs, New Tricks

I hear two phrases way too often on a production floor: “We have always done it this way,” and its first cousin, “We have been building this board for 20 years and never had a problem.” Inevitably, these phrases are always uttered by a “seasoned” engineer in the industry that probably should know better. Don’t get me wrong, these phrases are going a long way in my effort to send two kids to college, but they aren’t very helpful regarding reliability. Times change, and technology changes even faster, and if you don’t keep up, you will be left behind. This means focusing on emerging technologies and the associated risk that may be unique to that package.

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December 06, 2019

Quest for Reliability: Voices Carry

The title of Eric Camden’s column this month is “Voices Carry,” so not only is it a great chance to revisit the wonderfully written, top-10 hit song by ‘Til Tuesday/Aimee Mann, but it is also a good opportunity to share the voices of modern electronics and electronic assembly processes.

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November 26, 2019

Quest for Reliability: Artificial Reliability Over Intelligence

As the industry begins to shift from standard design tools to artificial intelligence (AI), reliability might be overlooked in an effort to build “smarter.” Over the last few years, the desire to manufacture anything and everything for less has included removing humans from as many positions as possible. There are a couple of viewpoints, and I can see positives in both.

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November 04, 2019

Quest for Reliability: Reliability by the Book

Having been in electronics for just shy of 20 years, I can say that the next time we work on a Class I failure analysis project, it will pretty much be the first. Class I electronics serve a different purpose in life, and if they fail, it’s normally not a big deal; instead, it’s mainly a minor inconvenience. In this month’s column, I’ll speak to specifications for Class I, II, and III products per IPC definitions as well as the IPC standards process.

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October 16, 2019

Quest for Reliability: SMTAI 2019 Thoughts

Before I headed to Rosemont, I was a little skeptical if it would be worth it for me, considering the lack of task groups that had become my SMTAI/IPC APEX EXPO focus. But after three days of sessions (and a somewhat impressive third-place showing at the SMTA trivia night), I was reminded of why I went to SMTAI in the first place: to learn about the newest technology and how to address age-old problems that are ever-evolving in this era of miniaturization.

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August 16, 2019

Sealing Your Fate

Coating does not always prevent failures; it is just as important to look at your cleanliness levels just as you would with an assembly that is not bound for coating. If you have a dirty assembly, you might be buying a little time, but ultimately, you've sealed your own fate.

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July 19, 2019

Quest for Reliability: The F Word

The word "failure" is as nasty as it gets in our world. It goes against everything we thought we knew. All contract manufacturing facilities strive to build a reliable product, or at least they all should. The problem is too many companies hope they are building reliable products without doing the work required to ensure they are.

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April 24, 2019

Quest for Reliability: These Darn Kids/Back in My Day

This month’s topic is focused on youth, both in terms of humans and technologies. I think these two topics go together since they rely on each other to a large degree. The latter has more than likely shaped or even invented by the former.

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April 03, 2019

How Smart Is Your Factory?

When you plan a production facility with the mindset that connectivity and optimization will be key aspects of your operation, it will pay dividends in the form of lower production cost, better traceability, and higher reliability.

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March 13, 2019

The Cost of Quality and the Higher Cost of Failure

If you are shopping a new product around to multiple contract manufacturers (CMs), and if all other things in two separate CMs are equal including price and delivery times but one offers a more comprehensive ongoing quality monitoring system, why wouldn't you go with that one? You usually pay some type of premium for the CM that has an overall quality monitoring system that goes beyond just ICT or bench level testing. Definitely, most CMs will give you some sort of assurance that the product is working as it leaves the facility, but if one has a mindset that more than basic testing is required to show reliability, you will more than likely have fewer field failures.

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February 21, 2019

The Effect of Thermal Profiles on Cleanliness and Electrical Performance

The process of thermal profiling is one of the most important considerations when setting assembly parameters in reflow soldering. Knowing how to effectively profile includes choosing the proper equipment, understanding the results and being able to adjust as necessary.

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January 02, 2019

How to Achieve the Apex of Reliability

Knowing the effect of residual ionic content is among the most important data points when looking at reliability because it is directly related to electrical leakage and electrochemical migration-related issues in a normal field service environment. This column discusses the test methods mostly related to cleanliness and different ways to determine if the process is clean enough for the intended end-use environment.

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December 06, 2018

Does Medical Device Reliability Worry You Sick?

When you are manufacturing high-reliability assemblies related to medical industry, it is critical to take a very close look at the assembly process and all other processes that can influence the end-use reliability—even seemingly unrelated processes, such as post-installation cleaning—as it really could be a matter of life or death.

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October 30, 2018

Are You Connected to Reliability?

The need for communication between every operator on the manufacturing floor can be a critical difference between a reliable piece of hardware and one that presents some level of unexpected performance. This column highlights a few things happening in the shop floor, such as as touch-up soldering and third shift issue, not commonly communicated, which can cause performance issues.

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October 03, 2018

Are Megatrends Putting Your Product at Megarisk?

It took 38 years for radio to get 50 million users, television made it in 13 years, Internet in four, iPod in three, and Facebook in only two years. What these numbers mean to our industry is the need to create electronics at blazing speeds that we haven’t seen before. But how will it affect reliability? Read on.

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September 04, 2018

Cleaning a No-clean Flux: The Worst Decision You’ve Ever Made?

There are a few reasons to choose to clean a no-clean flux, such as when the PCB assembly requires conformal coating, or when probes are required for testing. Other than that, there seems to be no need to clean a no-clean flux. This column tells you more.

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July 18, 2018

Contamination: The Enemy of Electronics

Welcome to the first installation of “Quest for Reliability.” The goal behind this column is to use my experience at an independent laboratory for over 18 years to help readers understand PCBA reliability issues, and more importantly, prevent suspect conditions in the first place. The laboratory I work in has served every sector of the electronics industry, from oil and gas equipment designed to function miles below the surface of the earth, to aerospace companies and everywhere in between.

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