The electronics market is always looking for smaller, lighter packages with faster speeds, lower power consumption and higher pin counts. In response to this, semiconductor manufacturers need to constantly enhance their products to meet the market demands while at the same time ensuring the quality of the products produced.
Various mechanical tests are commonly performed on surface mount or peripheral assemblies and on printed circuit boards (PCB) during product development phase to verify the product design; or as a quality check during the manufacturing process. One such test is the pin pull test. This test is performed by subjecting the solder pin to a tensile force until failure occurs. This measures the adhesion strength of the solder pin to the pad and the pad to the laminate. The miniature size pins are closely arranged in an array and the fixtures selected must ensure that the pins are not damaged prior to - and during the clamping process.
We recommend the 5965 dual column mechanical testing machine equipped with the X-Y manual translation stage, specimen clamping plate, and custom double-action pneumatic wedge grips to perform the pin pull test. The X-Y stage allows for precise positioning and alignment of the test pin below the Z-axis actuator and the user can move to the next test pin easily by adjusting the micrometers. Our custom double-action pneumatic grip is designed with the grip body moving down to effect clamping while the jaw faces move horizontally in parallel. This feature makes it possible to pre-select the exact point at which the test pin will be held while at the same time ensures that adjacent pins are not damaged. Bluehill 3 contains many test set-up parameters, providing the user the flexibility to create test methods that automatically calculate the desired results and produce a test report.