Humans love modifications, but over time they can add up to false comparisons.

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily ... is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” – William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King John”

We are used to editing, cropping and modifying cellphone photos to improve and enhance the original images. This is often achieved by adjusting their contrast and brightness, and applying software filters that could, for example, sharpen or otherwise change the look and details. Why should images taken for x-ray inspection be any different? They are not, of course. The images you see in my columns, as well as in probably every other piece of technical literature, together with virtually every other image seen in today’s media, are likely modified on some level. While we may accept this situation intellectually, I would suggest we often too implicitly trust what our eyes see, and therefore any inherent image manipulation is often taken as fact. This can cause the details we see and accept to possibly mislead us as to the reality of the original. As we use such images to make value judgments on the quality and possible faults in electronics manufacture, is this an issue we should be concerned with, or is it a manipulation we need, but also need to understand why we do it, so we can make the best analysis?

If only defects were in as short supply as logic and wisdom.

This is what happens when the pyramid inverts and falls on little old unsuspecting you. Just what you deserve for minding your own business.

“We need to audit your quality system. You’re a new vendor with contingent qualification. We can’t make it permanent without an audit.”

What do you mean we’re a new vendor? We’ve been doing business with you for 11 years.

“Doesn’t matter. New regime in place. Since you’re a great big unknown to us, who are new, consider yourself, as we do, a new vendor. Clean slate. Get used to it. Plus, you had a recent test escape, and we need to determine the root cause. Might as well do the full workup.”

Just as Covid-19 jolted supply chains, it also disrupted how we communicate.

Maintaining effective, open, timely communication can be one of the biggest challenges facing employees at every level. The executive team sets the vision, strategy and tactical goals. Managers and supervisors are tasked with communicating and converting that message into understandable, reasonable, attainable and ultimately successful initiatives and efforts. Employees, in turn, communicate their issues, problems and ideas to accomplish back to the higher-ups, who refine the goals, so the organization moves forward profitably, satisfying customers.

On normal days, good communications can be daunting and complex. And the past several months have been anything but normal.

In-person communication offers the advantage of body language to accentuate the spoken word. The parties involved can literally see eye-to-eye. A speaker can scan a room to see how their message is received and recalibrate as needed. Workers can lean back from their desk or stand over a cubicle wall to ask a colleague a question and receive a quick response. A team can huddle on demand to communicate a problem and brainstorm a solution. How does that work when you and your staff are forced to communicate virtually?

Organic solderability preservatives, or, if you prefer, organic surface protectants, or OSPs, have been with us for decades. Did you know more than 60% of the world’s boards use OSPs? They are in everything from smartphones to tablets to medical devices, airbags, and engine controls.

Major OEMs like Intel, Apple, Cisco, Continental, Bosch, Denso, and Hitachi Automotive are known to use them. Yet when engineers discuss their preferred finishes, OSPs tend to be on the outside looking in.

A new IPC task group is trying to bring an added layer of credibility to OSPs for high-temperature soldering by developing a standard, along with a series of test methods.

At a glance, OSPs have ample potential. Compared to metallic finishes, they are low-cost and offer much-sought-after surface coplanarity on the coated copper pads. They emerged in the 1980s as a replacement for hot air solder leveling, which was an omnipresent but more expensive, higher maintenance process. Because of their ability to produce thin, even coatings, OSPs seemed superior for assemblers working with advanced packages, and in some cases OSPs cut the cost of the finish up to 50% over HASL and even more versus finishes containing gold or silver. Major OEMs like Lucent adopted OSPs for a large percentage of their boards.