PCB Failure Analysis

PCB Failure Analysis

Any company which is in the Electronic manufacturing industry or Electronic product industry that produce electronic hardware strives to achieve zero defect production. To reach out from these objective manufacturers must perform some level of printed circuit board failure analysis.

Any company which is in the Electronics manufacturing industry or Electronic product industry that produce electronic hardware strives to achieve zero defect production. To reach out from these objective manufacturers must perform some level of PCB failure analysis.

PCB Failure analysis will give invaluable feedback to design engineers to rectify the minor mistakes. Minor mistakes might have gone unnoticed during the initial design.

Electronic product device failure analysis provides a systematic process to help the company to identify and investigate to know why the electronic part is failed by testing the nature of the failure. By identifying the PCB failure analysis mode, mechanism, and elements such stresses the failure other issues.

Failure analysis processes evaluate the reliability of a component product under operation and determine to improve the product.

 

pcb failure analysis

Types of PCB Failure analysis test.

In the PCB failure testing, there are a number of tests which are suitable for identifying the defects in the electronic device. When the PCB failure analyst understand the faults and know how to prevent them and the company can increase the production process as well as the assemblies it manufactures.

  1.    Micro-Sectioning Analysis

Micro-sectioning also know has cross-sectioning or metallographic preparations are used for PCB testing.

  • Thermo-mechanical failures
  • Component Defects
  • Opens or shorts
  • Processing failure due to solder reflow
  • Raw material evaluations

Micro-sectioning Analysis provides information to the PCB failure analyst with a precise technique that isolates the relevant electronic component and removes the part from the PCB board.

  1. Solderability Testing

Solderability test work for a variety of applications and quality standards

The solderability testing helps in to provide the accurate measurement of why a fault may have occurred .some of the application that includes in solderability testing.

  • PCB Coating Evaluation
  • Solder Evaluation
  • Flux Evaluation
  • Benchmarking
  • Quality control

The PCB failure analyst should have the experience to differentiate the various conditions and understand the requirements of the testing technique

The PCB failure analyst also expertise to accurately place the specific conditions

  1. PCB Contamination Testing

Contaminations can be the reason for part failure including degradation metallization Processing of printed circuit boards is taken place in an extremely clean environment designed to keep the component from contamination to be processed and assembly without part failure.

  •         Copper etching liquid
  •         Hot air leveling fluxes
  •         Electrolytic solutions
  •         Water-soluble soldering

Contamination testing, the use of chemicals typically requires a cleaning process. Electronic industry introduced ionic contamination testing process which is helpful in measuring and cleaning efficiency and stability of the cleaning process. This process of testing for contamination involves the immersion of the PCB sample into a solution. The solution dissolves the ionic contamination which causes a change in the constitution of the solutions and has a significant effect on the values or readings.

In this process, a technician measures the changes in the resistance of the solution solvent a change in resistance that a failure analyst can measure. Then the analyst plots the changes in contamination level on a contamination and compares the value with industry standards.

When the analyst fined the reading exceeds the established level it confirms that the manufacturer has a problem with the cleaning process. This dissolving technique can detect even smallest parts in the PCB.

4.Optical Microscopy/SEM

Optical Microscopy may be one of the most popular testing methods many customers choose optical microscopy because of its speed and accuracy to detect faults and problems associated with soldering and assembly. The process of optical Microscopy uses a high power microscope with visible light this microscope can reach up to 1000X, has small depth field and shows features in a single plane.

SEM technology provides failure analysts with a three-dimensional view of the sample. Many analysts pair SEM with micro-sectioning testing.

5.X-ray Inspection

X-ray Inspection the users can employ the tools to detect actual or potential defects with the help of this tools they can also inspect a component that has hidden joints or parts located underneath the chip. The analyst can use X-ray inspection instead of visible light equipment to evaluate the PCB.

With the help of X-ray inspection capabilities, the analyst can conduct the following types of internal component examinations.

  •        Internal Particles
  •        Internal wire dress
  •        Die attach quality
  •        Voids in the sealing lid
  •        Substrate/printing wiring board trace integrity
  •        Insufficient Excessive or Poor solder

This X-ray inspection testing method ability to detect the surface and internal flaws in a non-destructive manner by keeping samples in pre-testing condition

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