Solder Paste Vs Solder Paste Cartridges

Can anybody give me the Pros and Cons of of using Cartridges over jars and/or vice-versa. Also, if using cartridges, what is the best way to keep the paste from seperating, short of buying a mixer that cost over $5000.00 Thanks, Bill

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| Can anybody give me the Pros and Cons of of using Cartridges over jars and/or vice-versa. Also, if using cartridges, what is the best way to keep the paste from seperating, short of buying a mixer that cost over $5000.00 | Thanks, | Bill | Bill, Method of supply should be dependent upon your volumes and desired controls. First of all, forget the mixer. Paste has changed a lot over the last few years. It still separates under pressure but otherwise, it's pretty stable. Are you running a batch process or are you continuously running? If you're running high volume / low mix, use cartridges. If you are dispensing a cartidge, you'll dispense close to 500g at a whack, thus no mixing. If you're running high mix / low volume, use jars. When using jars, the amount of paste you use will be dependent upon the size of the substrate and the quantity of the production run. I still mix my jars with a plastic spatula. NO METAL, it will tear off little shreds of plastic from the inside of the paste container. Jars allow you to return the paste to its' container but will allow for multiple flux systems to possibly end up in one container. It will also allow for paste to exceed it's stencil life if it is used and put away too often. Adequate paste controls will help prevent this.

Regards, Justin Medernach

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Hi Bill!

Justin hit the nail on the head with his advice. One other thing I'd add too is that if your volume and such points to using cartridges, I found that sometimes operators can get a little wasteful. I worked for a memory company where we'd use around 10,000 grams a day.

When setting up, the operators would look around for a solderpaste gun (we used those chaulking gun thing-a-ma-jigs to dispense it...) and if he didn't see one that was almost full, he'd go get another full cartridge. That was good as far as making sure that the paste was always fresh, but we'd wind-up with all these partial filled cartridges around...so look out for that.

About those mixer "thingies", it's been quite a while ago, but at another company I worked at, someone had bought one of those "Hot dog roller" mixers where you would put the jar in between two rollers and it would slowly spin the jar thus mixing the paste.

Well, we used Kester paste at the time and the jars used to be kinda' mushroom shaped. I found out that if you put the jars on the rollers the wrong way, the mixer thingie would unscrew the tops of the jars for ya! Not only did it mix the paste, but unscrewed the jars too! The fact that you had to scoop the paste off of whatever the mixer was sitting on, and off of the rollers is besides the point...(GRIN)

-Steve Gregory-

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| Can anybody give me the Pros and Cons of of using Cartridges over jars and/or vice-versa. Also, if using cartridges, what is the best way to keep the paste from seperating, short of buying a mixer that cost over $5000.00 | Thanks, | Bill | Interesting question ?

Have you considered looking at 'cassette' based dispensers such as the Rheopump from MPM or DEK's ProFlow ?

K

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| | Can anybody give me the Pros and Cons of of using Cartridges over jars and/or vice-versa. Also, if using cartridges, what is the best way to keep the paste from seperating, short of buying a mixer that cost over $5000.00 | | Thanks, | | Bill | | | Interesting question ? | | Have you considered looking at 'cassette' based dispensers such as the Rheopump from MPM or DEK's ProFlow ? | | K | Very good answer. We are hand dispensing to the point safety, quality, and reliability are becoming issues within an operation requiring very high mix and low volume.

Our company's charter is safety first, equipment reliability, then product quality. Safety wins out on all counts when considering cartridge or "ProFlow" paste dispensers.

Though our volume, for any particular part number, is low, our placement count is relatively high. We run 9 different board "types" requiring up to 23 million placements per month. This may not seem high to some, but it is one driver to install ProFlow on our DEK machines to ensure the above, in order, requirements are met.

Earl Moon

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Hi Earl ,

Have you already got ProFlow installed on your DEK Machines ? - if so I would be interested to hear any feedback on it. That goes for anyone else using the system - or in fact the MPM Rheopump.

K

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