The behavior of solder pastes in stencil printing with vibrating squeegee

Stencil printing of solder paste with sinusoidally vibrated squeegee is a new technique developed in recent years used for the assembly of printed circuit boards (PCB's) in the surface mount technology (SMT). Understanding of the behavior of solder paste under the action of vibrating squeegee is needed to optimize the process parameters. Two vibration experiments on solder paste were conducted. In the first experiment, a prototype of vibrating squeegee system was used to simulate the printing process and in the second experiment paste samples were packed in a cylindrical container which was horizontally vibrated. Experimental results validate the prior theoretical predictions. Suitable ranges of vibration parameters were found.