Conduction soldering: Facts, fiction and best practices

Manual soldering has been used for electronics assembly processes for over seven decades. Yet, even today, poor practices and poor assumptions about soldering methods still create problems with reliability and even with processing efficiencies (speed and trough-put). This paper will address the two most important elements of the soldering process, speed and control, providing essential foundational knowledge for establishing a robust soldering process. Especially in lead-lead free soldering as many companies have fallen into assuming that simply turning up the temperature will be the only solution required.