Practical Guide to the Packaging of Electronics, 2nd Edition

Book Preface

Issues in Electronics Packaging Design

Let us assume that you have the responsibility of developing a new electronics system. Let us also assume that your budget allows you to bring a team of experts together. Where do you begin? Whom do you hire?

It does make sense to hire a team of electrical engineers to design the electronics and people to lay out the boards, and maybe even people who will eventually manufacture them. Also, you have been advised that overheating may be a problem, so you consider hiring a thermal engineer, but one of your team member’s points out that he has a few tricks up his sleeve and it is better to spend the money elsewhere.

In the last leg of your project you hire a junior designer to develop your enclosure, and you send the product to the market ahead of schedule. Everyone is happy, but …

In a few months, you have a problem. Your field units fail too often. The majority seems to have an overheating problem. There is a fan to cool the system, but it is not enough; you decide to add another one but to no avail.

Well, your patience runs out and you decide to hire the thermal engineer after all. His initial reaction is to point out that thermal considerations have not been built into the system design, but after a few weeks he manages to find a solution; however, it is expensive and cumbersome. Well, you have no other choice; you accept his recommendations and all of the systems are retrofitted.

Before you have a chance to take a sigh of relief, you have another problem facing you. The field units fail again but for different reasons. Some fail at the printed circuit board (PCB) level, others fail on the surface of the enclosure, and still others fail for no apparent reason.

What have you overlooked?

• What knowledge base do you need to have to answer this question? This guide was developed precisely to help you answer this question. The objectives are:
• To develop a fundamental grasp of the engineering issuesinvolved in electronics packaging.
• To develop the ability to define guidelines • for system’s design— when the design criteria and components are not fully known.
• To identify reliability issues and concerns.
• To develop the ability to conduct more complete analyses for the final design.