The small focused spot size and-localized heating possible with laser
soldering makes it an attractive alternative technique for bonding sur
face mount devices with small lead pitch onto a printed wiring board.
Using a Nd:YAG laser, we have applied this technique to reflow solderi
ng of a test device-a 224-pin quad ceramic chip (lead spacing 25 mil)-
onto pretinned substrates. The soldering step was incorporated into a
larger workcell, in which an Adept robot was used to place the compone
nt in position and also to scan the laser beam, delivered via a fiber,
over the leads to be soldered. The mobile laser head was modified to
accept a miniature CCD camera coupled to a Cognex vision system, which
allowed coincident viewing of the soldering process and postsoldering
inspection of the joints.