Self-teaching setup for reflow soldering process

Abstract

Thermal management of electronic modules includes two main aspects. One is the dissipation management and the other one is the absorption of heat during the assembly. Particularly, the heat absorption is characteristic for reflow soldering process. Reflow soldering means to pass the assembly (substrate, solder drops and components) through a reflow oven. The main issue of reflow soldering process is that thermal equilibrium isn't rise. The reason is the continuous moving of the structure through the oven's heated environment. Therefore, a usual application for thermal analyze can't be used to preview the structures' heating or the proper soldering. To obtain prediction for temperatures in any point of structure's area, at any time of soldering process, a dedicate application must be used. This kind of application must have two main inputs: the first group all information about the oven, such as convection distribution, emissive distribution, heaters' temperatures, conveyor's speed, etc, and the second group all information about structure, such as substrate properties, component properties and placement, etc. As outputs, is useful to know the setup parameters for process and a virtual thermal map of solder joints. Such application is under development in CETTI, and partial results are disseminated in this paper © 2005 IEEE.