Solder Paste Alloy Check

At EPTAC Corporation, Mr. Lambert oversees content of course offerings, IPC Certification programs and provides customers with expert consultation in electronics manufacturing, including RoHS/WEEE and lead free issues. Leo is also the IPC General Chairman for the Assembly/Joining Process Committee.

Mr. Biocca was a chemist with many years experience in soldering technologies. He presented around the world in matters relating to process optimization and assembly. He was the author of many technical papers delivered globally. Mr. Biocca was a respected mentor in the electronics industry. He passed away in November, 2014.

Following a successful 20 year career within world class OEMs and EMS providers including Honeywell, Bull Electronics, IBM, Celestica and Plexus, James founded Round Rock Consulting a business consultancy focused on supporting OEMs and EMS providers with product realization strategies.

Mr. Smith has been supporting customers in the electronics assembly industry since 1994. His expertise is focused on solder paste printing and reducing soldering defects. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Marketing. He has authored several papers in trade magazines and at industry conferences. He is an SMTA Certified Process Engineer.

Fritz's career in electronics manufacturing has included diverse engineering roles including PWB fabrication, thick film print & fire, SMT and wave/selective solder process engineering, and electronics materials development and marketing. Fritz's educational background is in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on materials science. Design of Experiments (DoE) techniques have been an area of independent study. Fritz has published over a dozen papers at various industry conferences.

Renee has been with Trace and an IPC member for 16 years. She has managed all military and commercial PB qualification and conformance testing and training, as well as product qualification and testing in the areas of solder pastes, fluxes, solder masks, and conformal coat. She is the chairman of the IPC Testing and the IPC-J-STD-004 Flux Specification Committees and the Vice Chairman of the Assembly and Joining Committee. She has published more than a dozen papers and presented at numerous electronics conferences.

Subject matter expert in the field of electronics assembly and soldering.

While the XRF test method discussed by the other experts is the gold standard by which other tests are measured, if all you need to know is which boards have leaded alloys applied then there is possibly an easier method (depending on the number of assemblies in question).

I routinely use "Instant Lead Testing Swabs". These swabs consist of a cardboard tube with two glass vials inside which are broken to mix powder and liquid components to generate a liquid that turns bright pink in the presence of lead. They are simple to use and a positive test is easy to present to Management based on the color change. When using a chemical test such as this it is highly recommended that the residues be removed by a capable aqueous wash process.

The test method also doesn't address the root cause of the defect so I agree with the other Experts on having a separate location for the different paste alloys (and possibly flux chemistries).

With all due respect to the experts, I believe they are over thinking this. XRF is a great tool for detecting minute amounts of an element in a solder joint. In this case, however, you are looking for the presence or absence of a large amount of of an element. Expensive XRF equipment is not needed. As Jon Ashton suggested, lead test strips are perfectly adequate for this job and at a fraction of the cost of purchasing an XRF unit.