WELDING

Welding is a fabrication or sculptural process that joins materials,

usually metals or thermoplastics, by causing fusion, which is distinct from lower temperature metaljoining techniques such as brazing and soldering, which do not melt the base metal. In addition to
melting the base metal, a filler material is often added to the joint to form a pool of molten material
(the weld pool) that cools to form a joint that can be as strong as the base material. Pressure may
also be used in conjunction with heat, or by itself, to produce a weld.
Arc welding is a type of welding that uses a welding power supply to create an electric arc between
an electrode and the base material to melt the metals at the welding point. They can use
either direct (DC) or alternating (AC) current, and consumable or non-consumableelectrodes. The
welding region is usually protected by some type of shielding gas, vapor, or slag. Arc welding
processes may be manual, semi-automatic, or fully automated. First developed in the late part of the
19th century, arc welding became commercially important in shipbuilding during the Second World
War. Today it remains an important process for the fabrication of steel structures and vehicles.

Soldering
Soldering (pronounced /s dr / by Americans and as spelt in the UK), is a process in which two
or more metal items are joined together by melting and flowing a filler metal (solder) into the joint,
the filler metal having a lower melting pointthan the adjoining metal. Soldering differs from welding in
that soldering does not involve melting the work pieces. Inbrazing, the filler metal melts at a higher
temperature, but the work piece metal does not melt. In the past, nearly all solders contained lead,
but environmental and health concerns have increasingly dictated use of lead-free alloys for
electronics and plumbing purposes.

Electronic components (PCBs)[edit]

Soldering of an SMD capacitor

A tube of multicore electronics solder used for manual soldering

An improperly soldered 'cold' joint

Broken solder joints on a circuit board

Currently, mass-production printed circuit boards (PCBs) are mostly wave soldered or reflow
soldered, though hand soldering of production electronics is also still standard practice.
In wave soldering, parts are temporarily kept in place with small dabs of adhesive, then the
assembly is passed over flowing solder in a bulk container. This solder is shaken into waves so the

whole PCB is not submerged in solder, but rather touched by these waves. The end result is that
solder stays on pins and pads, but not on the PCB itself.
Reflow soldering is a process in which a solder paste (a mixture of prealloyed solder powder and a
flux-vehicle that has a peanut butter-like consistency[6]) is used to stick the components to their
attachment pads, after which the assembly is heated by an infrared lamp, a hot air pencil, or, more
commonly, by passing it through a carefully controlled oven.
Since different components can be best assembled by different techniques, it is common to use two
or more processes for a given PCB. For example, surface mounted parts may be reflow soldered
first, with a wave soldering process for the through-hole mounted components coming next, and
bulkier parts hand-soldered last.
For hand soldering, the heat source tool should be selected to provide adequate heat for the size of
joint to be completed. A 100 watt soldering iron may provide too much heat for printed circuit boards,
while a 25 watt iron will not provide enough heat for large electrical connectors, joining copper roof
flashing, or large stained-glass lead came. Using a tool with too high a temperature can damage
sensitive components, but protracted heating by a tool that is too cool or under powered can also
cause extensive heat damage.
Hand-soldering techniques require a great deal of skill to use on what is known as fine-pitch
soldering of chip packages. In particular ball grid array (BGA) devices are notoriously difficult, if not
impossible, to rework by hand.
For attachment of electronic components to a PCB, proper selection and use of flux helps prevent
oxidation during soldering, which is essential for good wetting and heat transfer. The soldering iron
tip must be clean and pre-tinned with solder to ensure rapid heat transfer. Components which
dissipate large amounts of heat during operation are sometimes elevated above the PCB to avoid
PCB overheating. After inserting a through-hole mounted component, the excess lead is cut off,
leaving a length of about the radius of the pad. Plastic or metal mounting clips or holders may be
used with large devices to aid heat dissipation and reduce joint stresses.
A heat sink may be used on the leads of heat sensitive components to reduce heat transfer to the
component. This is especially applicable to germanium parts. (Note the heat sink will mean the use
of more heat to complete the joint.) If all metal surfaces are not properly fluxed and brought above
the melting temperature of the solder in use, the result will be an unreliable "cold solder joint".
To simplify soldering, beginners are usually advised to apply the soldering iron and the solder
separately to the joint, rather than the solder being applied direct to the iron. When sufficient solder

is applied, the solder wire is removed. When the surfaces are adequately heated, the solder will flow
around the joint. The iron is then removed from the joint.
Since non-eutectic solder alloys have a small plastic range, the joint must not be moved until the
solder has cooled down through both the liquidus and solidus temperatures. When visually
inspected, a good solder joint will appear smooth and shiny, with the outline of the soldered wire
clearly visible. A matte gray surface is a good indicator of a joint that was moved during soldering.
Other solder defects can be detected visually as well. Too little solder will result in a dry and
unreliable joint; too much solder (the familiar 'solder blob' to beginners) is not necessarily unsound,
but tends to mean poor wetting. With some fluxes, flux residue remaining on the joint may need to
be removed, using water, alcohol or other solvents compatible with the parts in question.
Excess solder and unconsumed flux and residue is sometimes wiped from the soldering iron tip
between joints. The tip of the iron is kept wetted with solder ("tinned") when hot to assist soldering,
and when hot and cold to minimize oxidation and corrosion of the tip itself.
Environmental legislation in many countries, and the whole of the European Community area
(see RoHS), has led to a change in formulation of both solders and fluxes. Water-soluble non-rosinbased fluxes have been increasingly used since the 1980s so that soldered boards can be cleaned
with water or water-based cleaners. This eliminates hazardous solvents from the production
environment, and from factory effluents.

POTTING
In electronics, potting is a process of filling a complete electronic assembly with a solid or
gelatinous compound for resistance to shock and vibration, and for exclusion of moisture and
corrosive agents. Thermo-setting plastics or silicone rubber gels are often used. Many sites
recommend using silicone or epoxy to protect from impact and loose wires.

[1]

Araldite (a brand

name) potting compound has been suggested for certain automotive applications.
Most circuit board assembly houses coat assemblies with a layer of transparent conformal
coating rather than potting.[2] Conformal coating gives most of the benefits of potting, and is lighter
and easier to inspect, test, and repair.
When potting a circuit board that uses surface-mount technology, low glass transition
temperature (Tg) potting compounds such aspolyurethane or silicone are used, because high
Tg potting compounds may break solder bonds as they harden and shrink at low temperatures. [3]

resin dispensing system is a technical installation to process casting resin for

the purpose of filling, sealing, covering or soaking technical parts, especially in the field of electricity
and electronics like transformers, LCDs and other devices of various size.
Due to progressing miniaturization and introduction of electronics into new areas, quality
requirements for the parts are rising, and thus the quality of dispensing must be increased as well.
To obtain the required quality, on one hand, the resin system has to be developed and optimized
accordingly. On the other hand, the resin dispensing system has to work more and more precisely to
obtain best dispensing. Because of continuously increasing cost pressure, casting devices must be
capable of increased quality, while also becoming faster and more reliable.

Molding or moulding (see spelling differences) is the process

of manufacturing by shaping liquid or pliable raw material using a rigid frame called a mold or matrix.
[1]

This itself may have been made using a pattern or model of the final object.

A mold or mould is a hollowed-out block that is filled with a liquid or pliable material
like plastic, glass, metal, or ceramic raw materials.[2]The liquid hardens or sets inside the mold,
adopting its shape. A mold is the counterpart to a cast. The very common bi-valve molding process
uses two molds, one for each half of the object. Piece-molding uses a number of different molds,
each creating a section of a complicated object. This is generally only used for larger and more
valuable objects.
The manufacturer who makes the molds is called the moldmaker. A release agent is typically used to
make removal of the hardened/set substance from the mold easier. Typical uses for molded plastics
include molded furniture, molded household goods, molded cases, and structural materials.
Injection moulding (injection molding in the USA) is a manufacturing process for producing parts
by injecting material into a mould. Injection moulding can be performed with a host of materials,
including metals, glasses, elastomers, confections, and most
commonlythermoplastic and thermosetting polymers. Material for the part is fed into a heated barrel,
mixed, and forced into a mould cavity, where it cools and hardens to the configuration of the cavity.
[1]:240

After a product is designed, usually by an industrial designer or an engineer, moulds are made

by a mouldmaker (or toolmaker) from metal, usually either steel or aluminum, and precisionmachined to form the features of the desired part. Injection moulding is widely used for

manufacturing a variety of parts, from the smallest components to entirebody panels of cars.
Advances in 3D printing technology, using photopolymers which do not melt during the injection
moulding of some lower temperature thermoplastics, can be used for some simple injection moulds.
Parts to be injection moulded must be very carefully designed to facilitate the moulding process; the
material used for the part, the desired shape and features of the part, the material of the mould, and
the properties of the moulding machine must all be taken into account. The versatility of injection
moulding is facilitated by this breadth of design considerations and possibilities.

Bending is a manufacturing process that produces a V-shape, U-shape, or channel shape

along a straight axis in ductilematerials, most commonly sheet metal.[1] Commonly used equipment
include box and pan brakes, brake presses, and other specialized machine presses. Typical
products that are made like this are boxes such as electrical enclosures and rectangular ductwork.
Notching is a metal-cutting process used on sheetmetal or thin barstock, sometimes on angle
sections or tube. A shearing or punching process is used in a press, so as to cut vertically down and
perpendicular to the surface, working from the edge of a workpiece. Sometimes the goal is merely
the notch itself, but usually this is a precursor to some other process: such as bending a corner in
sheet or joining two tubes at a tee joint, notching one to fit closely to the other.
Notching is a low-cost process, particularly for its low tooling costs with a small range of standard
punches. The capital cost of the punch press can be expensive though, so small fabrication shops
often out-source their notching work to a press shop or notching specialist. Notching of large or
heavy sections, particularly for large tube fabrication or HVAC, is increasingly carried out by plasma
cutting rather than punch tools.
The accuracy of punch notching is good, depending on the care with which it's carried out. For
manual folding work, prior notching can often improve resultant accuracy of the folding itself.
The speed of notching is usually limited by manual handling when loading the workpieces into the
press. Pieces some feet long may be manually loaded into a single-stroke press. Smaller pieces are
still generally hand-fed, limiting speeds to perhaps 100 strokes / minute.
Almost any workable metal can be notched. It's particularly suitable where the metal is otherwise
awkward to drill, such as stainless steels, titanium or previously heat-treated aluminium alloys. It is a
operation of removing a small part of metal sheet of desired shape from edge of metal sheet

Electric resistance welding (ERW[1]) refers to a group

of welding processes such as spot and seam welding that produce coalescence of faying
surfaces where heat to form the weld is generated by the electrical resistance of material combined
with the time and the force used to hold the materials together during welding. Some factors
influencing heat or welding temperatures are the proportions of the workpieces, the metal coating or
the lack of coating, the electrode materials, electrode geometry, electrode pressing force, electrical
current and length of welding time. Small pools of molten metal are formed at the point of most
electrical resistance (the connecting or "faying" surfaces) as an electrical current (100100,000 A) is
passed through the metal. In general, resistance welding methods are efficient and cause little
pollution, but their applications are limited to relatively thin materials and the equipment cost can be
high (although in production situations the cost per weld may be low).
Resistance 'spot welding(RSW)[1] is a process in which contacting metal surfaces are joined by the
heat obtained from resistance toelectric current.
Work-pieces are held together under pressure exerted by electrodes. Typically the sheets are in the
0.5 to 3 mm (0.020 to 0.118 in) thickness range. The process uses two shaped copper
alloy electrodes to concentrate welding current into a small "spot" and to simultaneously clamp the
sheets together. Forcing a large current through the spot will melt the metal and form the weld. The
attractive feature of spot welding is that a lot of energy can be delivered to the spot in a very short
time (approximately 10100 milliseconds).[2] That permits the welding to occur without excessive
heating of the remainder of the sheet.
The amount of heat (energy) delivered to the spot is determined by the resistance between the
electrodes and the magnitude and duration of the current. [3] The amount of energy is chosen to
match the sheet's material properties, its thickness, and type of electrodes. Applying too little energy
will not melt the metal or will make a poor weld. Applying too much energy will melt too much metal,
eject molten material, and make a hole rather than a weld. [4] Another feature of spot welding is that
the energy delivered to the spot can be controlled to produce reliable welds.

ESD: Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is the sudden flow of electricity between two electrically
charged objects caused by contact, anelectrical short, or dielectric breakdown. A buildup of static
electricity can be caused by tribocharging or by electrostatic induction. The ESD occurs when
differently-charged objects are brought close together or when the dielectric between them breaks
down, often creating a visible spark.
ESD can create spectacular electric sparks (lightning, with the accompanying sound of thunder, is a
large-scale ESD event), but also less dramatic forms which may be neither seen nor heard, yet still
be large enough to cause damage to sensitive electronic devices. Electric sparks require a field

strength above approximately 4 kV/cm in air, as notably occurs in lightning strikes. Other forms of
ESD include corona discharge from sharp electrodes and brush discharge from blunt electrodes.
ESD can cause a range of harmful effects of importance in industry, including gas, fuel vapour and
coal dust explosions, as well as failure of solid state electronics components such as integrated
circuits. These can suffer permanent damage when subjected to high voltages. Electronics
manufacturers therefore establish electrostatic protective areas free of static, using measures to
prevent charging, such as avoiding highly charging materials and measures to remove static such as
grounding human workers, providingantistatic devices, and controlling humidity.
ESD simulators may be used to test electronic devices, for example with a human body model or a
charged device model.

Protection during manufacture[edit]

In manufacturing, prevention of ESD is based on an Electrostatic Discharge Protected Area (EPA).
The EPA can be a small workstation or a large manufacturing area. The main principle of an EPA is
that there are no highly-charging materials in the vicinity of ESD sensitive electronics, all conductive
materials are grounded, workers are grounded, and charge build-up on ESD sensitive electronics is
prevented. International standards are used to define a typical EPA and can be found for example
from International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) or American National Standards
Institute (ANSI).
ESD prevention within an EPA may include using appropriate ESD-safe packing material, the use of
conductive filaments on garments worn by assembly workers, conducting wrist straps and footstraps to prevent high voltages from accumulating on workers' bodies, anti-static matsor conductive
flooring materials to conduct harmful electric charges away from the work area, and humidity control.
Humid conditions prevent electrostatic charge generation because the thin layer of moisture that
accumulates on most surfaces serves to dissipate electric charges.
Ion generators are sometimes used to inject ions into the ambient airstream. Ionization systems help
to neutralize charged surface regions on insulative or dielectric materials. Insulating materials prone
to triboelectric charging should be kept away from sensitive devices to prevent accidental charging
of devices through induction. On aircraft, static dischargers are used on the trailing edges of wings
and other surfaces.
Manufacturers and users of integrated circuits must take precautions to avoid ESD. ESD prevention
can be part of the device itself and include special design techniques for device input and output
pins. External protection components can also be used with circuit layout.

Due to dielectric nature of electronics component and assemblies, electrostatic charging can not be
completely prevented during handling of devices. Most of ESD sensitive electronic assemblies and
components are also so small that manufacturing and handling is done with automated equipment.
ESD prevention activities are therefore important with those processes where components come into
direct contact with equipment surfaces. In addition, it is important to prevent ESD when an
electrostatic discharge sensitive component is connected with other conductive parts of the product
itself. An efficient way to prevent ESD is to use materials that are not too conductive but will slowly
conduct static charges away. These materials are called static dissipative and have resistivity values
in the range of 105 to 1012 ohm-meters. Materials in automated manufacturing which will touch on
conductive areas of ESD sensitive electronic should be made of dissipative material, and the
dissipative material must be grounded.
A thermistor is a type of resistor whose resistance is dependent on temperature, more so than in
standard resistors. The word is aportmanteau of thermal and resistor. Thermistors are widely used
as inrush current limiter, temperature sensors (NTC type typically),self-resetting overcurrent
protectors, and self-regulating heating elements.
Thermistors differ from resistance temperature detectors (RTDs) in that the material used in a
thermistor is generally a ceramic or polymer, while RTDs use pure metals. The temperature
response is also different; RTDs are useful over larger temperature ranges, while thermistors
typically achieve a greater precision within a limited temperature range, typically 90 C to 130 C.[1]

NTC[edit]
Many NTC thermistors are made from a pressed disc, rod, plate, bead or cast chip
of semiconducting material such as sintered metal oxides. They work because raising the

temperature of a semiconductor increases the number of active charge carriers - it promotes them
into the conduction band. The more charge carriers that are available, the more current a material
can conduct. In certain materials like ferric oxide (Fe2O3) with titanium (Ti) doping an ntype semiconductor is formed and the charge carriers areelectrons. In materials such as nickel oxide
(NiO) with lithium (Li) doping a p-type semiconductor is created where holes are the charge carriers.
[4]

Poka-yoke ( ) [poka joke] is a Japanese term that means "mistake-proofing". A

?

poka-yoke is any mechanism in a lean manufacturing process that helps an equipment operator
avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka). Its purpose is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting,
or drawing attention to human errors as they occur.[1] The concept was formalised, and the term
adopted, byShigeo Shingo as part of the Toyota Production System.[2][3] It was originally described
as baka-yoke, but as this means "fool-proofing" (or "idiot-proofing") the name was changed to the
milder poka-yoke.