Texcel's selective soldering investment will soon arrive

The selective soldering machine in question is the Versaflow 3/45 is manufactured by Kurt Ersa and supplied via Blundell. This machine offers perfect solder joint definition and reproducibility and will enable the company to product IPC Class III solder joints on PCBs of all shapes and sizes. Texcel have elected to use this machine together with a nitrogen generator. As SMT technology grows in popularity, through hole technology is taking up less overall space on the PCB assembly. Through-hole pins are still needed on many PCBs and they still need to be soldered. There is the option to hand solder these pins but this is a slow process and can’t guarantee repeatable accuracy or quality, the company writes in a press release. “This is where selective soldering comes to the fore. The selective soldering process allows us to solder through-hole pins and work around delicate SMT packages by targeting specific areas on the board. This promotes repeatability and fewer defects,” the company writes. This technology uses a round miniature pumped solder wave, like the end of a pencil to sequentially solder the PCB. The system also deploys a pre-heating process to improve flux activation and migration. It also uses higher than normal solder pot temperatures, which can increase the risk of oxidisation. To alleviate this risk, Texcel has decided to use a class 5 (>99.99%) Nitrogen gas supply, which stops oxidisation and increases the solder spread.