Solder Paste Pin Transfer vs Time Pressure Dispense

I doubt either Mycronic or Essemtec, as the only people who do dispense printing, will want to share their research with you. But clearly they will have followed every valid option to determine what is possible. Time & pressure is not used for anything fast or accurate. To my knowledge pin transfer is a niche process and little to do with solder paste on PCBs in production.

I was talking to another manufacturer recently who makes complex fine pitch & 0201 boards with very high component counts. They also do a lot of prototyping and low volume runs.

For one of their processes they wanted something that dispensed paste to complement stencil and selective so they got a MY600. As the beancounters got wind of what a MY600 could do (in theory), they pushed for it to get used for full board printing and so its use spread from it original role to a full on printer on the line, great idea right, save $200 on a stencil everytime engineering change something, no stencil to clean or store. Should be exactly where the My600 should shine.

The result: a clear increase in defects on completed boards. Even the MY600 with all the time & money Mycronic has thrown at perfecting the process and being the only game in town is not enough. The process is also not clean, the machine needs plenty of TLC and any paste near a via get blasted straight through the board and splatters the plate beneath.

As a result that machine is going back to its original role. Which arguably could be handled by a cheaper simpler dispense head in the printer or p&p.

There is a reason they haven't taken off, much like phase change reflow.

reply »