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Infrared cameras are widely used in the electronics
industry and have proved to be valuable in both
production and diagnostic areas. The ability of
thermography to view small, irregular shaped objects and
to remotely determine thermal characteristics and
temperatures has been a great asset to electrical
engineers and technicians. Since many design and
manufacturing flaws manifest themselves thermally,
product design teams and quality assurance groups find
it to their benefit to use infrared cameras to quickly
identify electrical problems in their products before
having to encounter more severe problems down the road.
Whether it is designing circuit boards or satellites,
infrared cameras can enable companies to maximize
production efficiency, minimize time to market and to
avoid costly recalls and warranty issues.
Application Examples
PCB Production – Infrared
cameras can play a major role during Printed Circuit
Board production during the design as well as the
testing phase. While designing circuits, engineers
can use infrared equipment to monitor the thermal
characteristics of certain components and make
design modifications based on their findings.
During the testing
phase, engineers use thermal imaging to locate
problems such as improper soldering of circuitry,
broken traces between components, power fluctuation
from leads that have been lifted, missing or
improperly soldered components, reversed polarity of
a component and erroneous component placements that
cause the circuitry to heat up. Visualizing and
quantifying the heat patterns generated enables
engineers to improve their product as well as the
processes used to create it.
Bare PCB
production - Bare circuit boards, made of
fibreglass and resin, have to be baked in hot air
ovens. These boards that usually consist of multiple
layers have to be heated several times in order to
cure each layer. The temperature at which these
layers are heated is extremely important and unless
it is just right, the boards can end up unusable and
have to be scrapped. Since board manufacturers have
low margins, such waste can drastically affect
profit. In order to prevent against scrap and to
maximize profit, board manufacturers are
well-advised to use infrared cameras to measure the
board temperature while it is being cured in order
to accurately control the temperature.
Wire Bonding in
Integrated Circuits – The wire bonding phase of
the integrated circuit production process can act as
a bottleneck. This is because a high number of welds
are involved and controlled heating and cooling is
required. The temperatures at which the wires are
welded to the IC are based on the diameter and
material of the wire. Manufacturers of ICs should
monitor the thermal profile as well as the
temperatures of the process right before and after
the wires are welded to the IC. This allows them to
increase throughput by adjusting the weld times
based on data gathered from thermal monitoring of
the process. In addition, it allows them to decrease
scrap because fewer ICs fail from heat damage and
fewer boards are lost due to poor welding.
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The Thermogram shows a hot
surface mounted resistor
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