A decision support system for the Alternative Assembly and Reflow Technology process

The Alternative Assembly and Reflow Technology (AART) process allows for the concurrent reflow soldering of through hole and surface mount components on to a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) assembly. The implementation of the AART process will preclude the need for wave and/or manual soldering. Prior to the implementation of the AART process, the engineer is required to compute the volume of solder paste that is needed to form a robust solder joint. The hole fill that can be anticipated should then be determined. Finally, the stencil apertures need to be designed. The decision support systems developed in this research, and described in this paper, can assist a process engineer with solder volume estimation, hole fill prediction, and with stencil aperture design.