December 2004

Stencil Metals Yesterday and Today THE SHORT HISTORY OF THE "STENCIL"

The Surface Mount Stencil industry is still relatively new.

Since the components have no leads; there is no need to have drilled and plated thru holes in printed circuit boards. This is an obvious large cost savings.

Solder joints that were formerly accomplished by spray fluxing and wave solder machines are now done using screen printable solder creams and set in ovens. The new process allows very densely populated printed circuit boards to be assembled much faster than the old through-hole designs, and with much higher reliability