ALPHA SBX02 Lowers Assembly Costs by Eliminating Wave Soldering Process

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Alpha, the world leader in the production of electronic soldering materials, has developed an innovative low temperature alloy, ALPHA SBX02, which can simplify PCB assembly process by enabling wave soldering to be eliminated.

The ALPHA® SBX02 alloy has a melting point below 140°C and has been successfully used with peak reflow profiles between 155°C and 190°C. Using SBX02 in a low temperature reflow process has many advantages, crucially, the elimination of a process step. Through-hole components requiring low peak temperature can be soldered by Pin-in-Paste low temperature reflow, meaning that wave soldering is eliminated. This in turn leads to substantial process and energy savings. Not only is the process simplified, but the temperature of the oven is greatly reduced allowing greater cost savings.

“ALPHA® SBX02 soldering alloy used in our low temperature solder paste OM-535 can provide substantial cost savings and increased daily throughput leading to a lower total cost of ownership,” comments Traian Cucu, Alpha’s Global Product Manager for Solder Paste. “The alloy enables the elimination of an extra wave or selective wave soldering process when temperature sensitive through-hole components are used in assembly and overall can significantly reduce the cost of producing an electronic assembly.”

In addition to its cost and energy saving capabilities in low temperature processes, ALPHA® SBX02 alloy has excellent mechanical strength, the ability to absorb impact energy and improved drop shock resistance over the SnBi0.4Ag alloy and also yields very low voiding BGA solder joints. These features make the alloy suitable for a number of applications including Automotive applications for ‘In-Cabin’ electronics.

About Alpha

Alpha, a business unit of Alent plc, is the global leader in the development, manufacturing and sales of innovative specialty materials used in a wide range of industry segments, including electronics assembly, power electronics, die attach, LED lighting, photovoltaics, semiconductor packaging, automotive and others.

With a unique global presence in over 30 locations throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific regions, Alpha supplies a full line of ALPHA® electronics assembly material products, including Solder Paste, Exactalloy® Solder Preforms, Cored Solder Wire, Wave Soldering Fluxes, Bar Solder Alloys, and Stencils.  It offers die attach product technologies to the power electronics segment in its Argomax®, Atrox™, Maxrel™, and Fortibond™ brands. For the LED segment, Alpha offers its Lumet™ products covering applications from die attach to systems assembly in the LED manufacturing process.

Alpha also offers product technologies for the Photovoltaic segment, including its unique pre-fluxed ALPHA® PV Ready Ribbon®, high performance standard ribbon, bus bar, solder wire and flux. Alpha’s Advanced Materials unit is the leader in electronic polymers and solder materials for semiconductor packaging applications.  Since its founding in 1872, Alpha has been committed to developing and manufacturing the highest quality specialty materials.  For more information, visit www.alpha.alent.com.