Ask the Experts Member

Renee Michalkiewicz

General Manager
Trace Laboratories

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.

Renee Michalkiewicz has submitted responses to the following questions.

Cleaning Under Low Clearance Components
I agree with your concern about cleaning a water-clean flux beneath low profile components. There can also be concern about ...

What Is This Contamination?
In looking at the photos below, I would suspect that the contamination is actually corrosion. We see this quite frequently. ...

Soldering Station Calibration
Most specifications have a tolerance for the soldering temperature which should be verified. At Trace, we calibrate annually at a ...

What Causes Black Pad?
Blackpad is caused by a high phosphorous content in the nickel layer of an ENIGfinish due to an improper balance ...

Solder Paste Alloy Check
There is an instrument called an XRF gun that could detect whether the paste used contains lead or is lead-free. ...

Un-cleaned PCB Assemblies Potted
It is possible that you would see corrosion and/or electromigration. ...

HASL vs. Immersion Gold
If all the areas are soldered, then it should not matter. Both immersion gold and HASL should perform equally well. ...

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