Test and assessment of the heating system of reflow ovens

As the point interconnects between printed circuit board (PCB) and chips and owning a soft constitutive material property, solder joint interconnect is the crucial link for reliability of electronic systems. The behaviour and quality of solder joints are determined by solder material, geometry design and reflowing operation processed by reflow ovens. Reflow oven is thus the most important means in PCB soldering and its performance directly concerns the behaviour and reliability of electronic systems. Until now there was no unified standard of evaluation and acceptance for reflow oven in China domestic market. The existed are all laid down by different equipment manufacturers, which makes confused and blinded situation for customer acceptance. This situation has heavily affected the quality of solder joints. There is an urgent need to carry out relevant research for formulating uniform inspection subjects, inspection standards, inspection tools and inspection processes. This paper reports our work on testing, assessment and research of the heating system of reflow ovens. This is a systematic study of testing process, including building testing equipment, setting up testing curve, measuring temperature field and assessing reflow ovens. Using the method suggested in the current paper, various performance parameters of the heating system can be obtained. The performance of reflow oven and behaviour of soldering joints can be predicted. The result and method are relevant to enhancement of manufacturing quality and selection of appropriate ovens. This may also set a basis for setting up relevant standards for regularity of the manufacturing and assessment of reflow ovens. This paper is concerned with the first step of a whole systematic project. Other results will be reported in due course.