"Jerry Stuckle" wrote in message
...
On 6/20/2014 8:01 AM, Jeff wrote:
I hadn't heard of using a domestic oven like this. It sounds like an
interesting idea. But wouldn't it be a bit hard on the components? I
wouldn't think many would like being heated his hot.
The commercial assembly lines I've seen use robot soldering irons
instead of heating the entire board.
I ahve never heard of a line usiung robot soldering irons!! It would be
far too slow. Lines normally use either wave soldering or IR reflow.
You'd be surprised how quickly a robot soldering iron makes a connection
- less than 1/2 second per connection (and, of course, you can have
multiple irons working on the same board simultaneously, with proper
programming). The first time I saw it was back in the 70's, but I'm
sure it was in use long before that.

Yes, it's slower than wave or IR reflow. But it's a proven technology
which has been around for decades and does have its uses - i.e.
temperature-sensitive components which can't handle the heat of wave or
IR reflow.


And back in the 1980s on some Perkin-Elmer processor cards, the whole card
was wired automatically, without there being an underlying PCB