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SMT Trends & Technologies: If You're Going to Do It, Do It Right
March 19, 2013 |Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Electronic equipment manufacturers know that rework and scrap cost money, but rarely do they know just how much. It is relatively easy to estimate: The cost of low yield is simply the difference in rework and scrap between the manufacturer’s production line and that of a benchmark line.
The two major causes of defects are poor solder printing, estimated to cause over 50 to 70% of assembled equipment defects, and pick-and-place errors, which cause the rest. The benchmark figure for stencil printing is approximately 10 defects per million (dpm) and, until recently, that for a pick-and-place machine was 5 dpm. Allowing for defects from PCB manufacture and reflow soldering, that translates to a whole-line benchmark of around 25 dpm. And, over the last few months, the pick-and-place benchmark has been cut again to a fairly astounding 1 dpm: One defect for every million components placed. That gives a whole-line benchmark of approximately 20 dpm.
Compared with a typical whole-line defect level in the industry of 50 to 100 dpm for standard components (the dpm for miniature components such as 01005-types can be 200 or more), that number might seem wildly optimistic. In high-value industries, the costs of field returns are out of all proportion to component costs. For example, to automotive customers, right the first time manufacturing is an absolute requirement.Read the full column here.Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of SMT Magazine.