DirEKt Ball Placement™ uses DEK’s patented ProFlow® DirEKt Imaging technology to bring significant advantages to semiconductor packaging techniques. Now component manufacturers can benefit from gentle handling and accurate solder ball placement, enabled by ProFlow, to achieve first pass yield consistently above 99%.
DirEKt Ball Placement is a development of ProFlow®, which has revolutionised materials transfer for advanced SMT manufacturing. The system features a ball transfer head, developed specifically to enhance processes for grid array packaging. Traversing the stencil, the head actively positions a solder ball at each pad location; cycle time is fast, consistent and independent of I/O count. Components may be processed in boats, strips, trays or boards.
Larger substrates, up to 500mm x 400mm, can be processed using DirEKt Ball Placement™, compared with traditional ball placement techniques. The ball reservoir is easily interchanged in situ, and the 2-stage hopper design holds up to 50 million solder balls to extend intervals between assists. Product changeover time is under 10 minutes.
Handling of solder balls is greatly improved over conventional techniques. DirEKt Ball Attach gently feeds the spheres to the surface of the stencil, preventing knocking and excessive friction inherent in gravity placement methods. Solder balls are transferred to the grid array in perfect condition. The transfer force exerted during placement is sufficient to push the ball down into the flux at each pad location, to enhance the integrity of the assembly during downstream handling and reflow soldering.
Flux deposition is also enhanced; DEK is the world leader in materials transfer technology for the electronics industry, supplying high performance systems for printing solder paste, flux, adhesive, polymers and alloys to the world’s most influential equipment manufacturers. DEK now brings flux deposition in component packaging to new levels of accuracy, repeatability and throughput
Material Deposited: Flux and solder spheres of diameter 1.2mm - 0.2mm.
Placement Technique: Flux applied using DirEKt imaging first using single stroke from squeegees or ProFlow. Balls placed using second machine setup for single placement stroke at slow speed.
Stencil: Flux stencil is typically 0.05mm - 0.1mm thick. Ball place stencil is same thickness as ball diameter and is step etched above the areas where the flux is deposited.
Key Parameters: Placement speeds. Accuracy of manufacture of ball place stencil. Calibration of transfer head for ball size.
Line Configuration: Optional wafer handler, DEK Horizon iX or Infinity, reflow oven.
Hardware: Ball Placement Head. Head is calibrated to ball diameter. Levelness, parallelism and co-planarity at the printer is critical.
Tooling: Either wafer pallet or vacuum tooling block.
DirEKt Ball Placement™ offers immediate and calculable benefits in grid array packaging; a breakthrough technology with emphatic advantages for the end user.
- Populate grid array substrates using stencil printing technique
- Actively places solder balls throughout grid array
- Low friction handling eliminates damage to solder balls
- Cycle time is predictable and repeatable
- Fast product changeover, less than ten minutes
- High reservoir capacity and two-stage hopper
- Primary reservoir capacity 600,000 balls at 0.75mm; 2,000,000 balls at 0.3mm
- 2nd stage hopper: 150% additional capacity
- Mean time between assists > five hours, 0.75mm balls at 1280 balls per cycle
- Solder ball diameter range: 1.2mm – 0.2mm
- Maximum processing area 500mm x 400mm
- Consistent, controllable transfer force pushes balls down into flux
- Fully adjustable tooling bed accepts carrier boats, fixed tooling, vacuum tooling
- Three sigma alignment accuracy at ± 25µm
- Flexible platform quickly reconfigures for the imaging of other materials
- Tooling options accept singulated substrates, strips, panels or boats
- Standard machine tooling bed compatible with Virtual Panel Tooling
- Wafer level processing can be offered with fully automated wafer handling
DEK DirEKt Ball Placement™ delivers a flexible, fast, accurate and low cost solution for solder ball placement. Available for 0.2mm diameter solder balls with fine-pitch accuracy at substrate or wafer level, up to the larger ball diameters of 0.75mm and 0.89mm as used in BGAs and the GORE snapSHOT™ process .
Take advantage of our expertise to complete the transfer of DirEKt Ball Placement technology to your site. We will prepare your DEK machines, design your process and tooling and even take care of training your core team to ensure that your site is truly prepared for high volume production. The entire project will be managed according to our Site Implementation plan. You can be sure of consistently high first pass yield.
Project Managed
- Establish project team
- Set Goals and objectives
- Documented Site Implementation Plan generated and maintained by DEK throughout the life of the project
Stencil set
- Provide stencil design from gerber data or CAD drawings
- Provide stencil set. Includes ball placement stencil PLUS additional flux screen OR solder stencil depending on application
- Verification of stencil to meet design spec before delivery to customer thereby ensuring first time success
Tooling
- Provide design for tooling from Gerber data or CAD drawings
- Further discount of 10% given if tooling purchased from DEK
- Tooling types designed to accept singulated substrates or boats using our virtual panel tooling. Strips, panels or circuit boards using our vacuum tooling. Silicon wafers using our universal wafer pallet
Machine benchmarking
- Machine audit and benchmarking service ensures machine is sufficiently clean, accurate and level
- Process dependent Critical Success Factors checked off
- Includes two days on-site support additional to time taken to fit any necessary upgrades i.e. Ball Placement Head.
Training
- Sufficient Operators, Technicians and Process Engineers will be trained to ensure readiness and competence of core team
- Includes three days on-site training tailored to meet your specific need
- Includes supporting documentation
- Site training plan developed to meet extra training needs for high volume ramps
- May require extra training where personnel are not already SMT ready
Process Implementation
- Functionality test - performed by DEK Engineer & measured against agreed goals
- Robustness test – a larger production run performed by core team supervised by DEK Engineer
- Pre Production test - final "dress rehearsal"
- Includes five days on-site support by DEK Project Engineer
High Volume Production
- Lineside Best Working Practice documents provide necessary procedural guidelines
- Further one-day review after one week to evaluate project against goals and expectations