Most engineers and operators have experienced poor solder wetting – an extremely common challenge in the electronics industry. Poor wetting can be caused by a number of different issues including low paste volume or inconsistent soldering temperatures, but mostly this is due to oxidisation or tarnishing of the solder joints caused by poorly stored or very old components, often referred to as ‘grey’ components…
Examples of poor wetting found by many common solder pastes
The effect of poor wetting usually has a direct impact on solder joint quality and will often result in the need for rework or repair.
Therefore, maximising solder wetting is crucial. Our partner, Koki, a leading soldering solutions provider, has created S3X58-M500C-7, a very powerful wetting, lead-free solder paste with the added benefit of low voiding.
M500C-7 has been designed to provide superior and consistent wetting spreading to oxidised metal surfaces. This is achieved because after the removal of oxide film at pre-heating stage, a new protective film is formed on the surface of the solder particles to effectively prevent re-oxidation during the remaining heating process. This in turn results in powerful wetting and melting.
Koki M500C-7 Activator technique and flux formulation
While this wetting capability can significantly improve the soldering process and overall finished quality, some of the additional benefits of M500C-7 include:
- It is effective on even the most severely oxidised pads, including those made of copper, tin and nickel
- The specially formulated flux chemistry ensures extremely low voiding with chip scale packages (CSPs) and large pad area components like power transistors and quad-flat no-leads
- It produces perfect melting and wetting on super fine pitch (>0.4mm pitch) and micro (>0.25mm diameter CSP, 0603 chip) components
- It is designed to prevent the occurrence of Head-In-Pillow (HiP) defects
- It improves cost-efficiency by enabling the re-use of leftover paste
- Excellent tack time and stencil life
- Perfect stencil roll and release
- Cleanable no-clean residue
Examples of superior wetting found by using Koki M500C-7 solder paste
For more information about our range of Koki solder paste, visit our webpage here, read more about Koki and its products here.
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