Iowa Scaled Engineering How-To

A longtime customer of ours Iowa Scaled Engineering has just finished a BUILDING MRSERVO blog post. This writeup details the multi-step process they use to assemble one of their flagship products with our kapton stencils.  I have partially covered their process and recommend you see their detailed writeup for their entire process.

Step 1: Frame the pcb and align the kapton stencil

IAS_KAPTON

Step 2: The next step is to apply the solder paste. A decent line of paste is applied to a putty knife.

IAS_Step2

Step 3: It is then drawn across the stencil, leaving a layer of paste. Then, the excess is scraped off and the PCB carefully removed from beneath the stencil.

IAS_Step3

Step 4: Below you can see the islands of solder paste left on the PCB.

IAS_Step4

Step 5: Once the solder paste has been applied, it is time to place the components.

IAS_Step5

Step 6: After Reflow the remaining thru-hole parts are soldered in place to complete the product.

IAS_StepFinal

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One Response to “Iowa Scaled Engineering How-To”

  1. Michael PetersenMay 11, 2014 at 12:54 am #

    The kapton stencils work very well. We’ve assembled everything from SO and SOT-223 packages to small 0.5mm pitch QFNs and fine pitch TSSOPs with very few problems. The issues we did have were the result of too much solder on the TSSOPs – when we reduced the aperture in the stencil on the next round, it worked perfectly with no solder bridging. Then stencil quality is good, they stand up well (I was skeptical at first), they are very affordable, and Ryan is great to work with. These stencils were a great find. Thanks for providing the service!