KIC's Brian O'Leary will present "How to Profile BGAs," a 30-minute webinar on designing reflow profiles for the components, on June 26. SMTA will host two webinar tutorials on design and assembly of BGAs and BTCs with SMT Editorial Advisory Board member Ray Prasad, on July 7 and July 14.

KIC sales manager for the Americas, Brian O'Leary, will host a free Webinar on June 26, 2009 at 1 p.m. PST. The topic of the Webinar will be providing solutions to common thermal process and profiling issues. Titled "How to Profile BGAs," the Webinar will last 30 minutes and will highlight ways of successfully profiling BGAs. BGAs are becoming ever more difficult to properly reflow due to a whole host of challenges, such as BGAs' relative thermal mass to other components, their relative position to other components on denser populated boards, and differences in conductive materials such as ceramics and the tightening of overall reflow specs due to lead-free conversion. All of these new demands leave little room for error, thus the need for high-quality profiles.

During this Webinar, KIC will discuss various techniques for reliability profiling BGAs, such as thermocouple attachment. Also examined will be some groundbreaking methods of BGA inspection, using the profiling process as one more tool in the arsenal to create a more robust inspection regiment for BGAs.

For more information, or to join the meeting on June 26, visit https://kicthermal.webex.com/kicthermal/j.php?ED=107946417&UID=85293982. The meeting number for this Webinar is 331 436 382.

Ray Prasad will teach the SMTA webtorials on BGAs and BTCs.

Ray Prasad of Ray Prasad Consultancy Group will lead two sessions, titled "Design and Assembly Challenges of Ball Grid Arrays (BGAs) and Bottom Termination Components (BTCs)" in July. SMTA's webtorial programming brings industry experts to attendees in a virtual setting without travel. Webtorials are offered in two 1.5 hour sessions.

The objective of "Design and Assembly Challenges of Ball Grid Arrays and Bottom Termination Components" is to identify the design and process issues in BGAs and BTC and the impact of lead-free that must be resolved for an effective implementation of mixed assembly electronics products for both tin/lead and lead-free. This is not a theoretical course, it is based on Prasad's experience at Boeing, Intel, and numerous clients. This course deals with "real-world" problems in lead-free implementation.

Anyone in process, quality, manufacturing, design, purchasing and management who wants to acquire a solid understanding of design and manufacturing issues in SMT, BGAs, BTCs (QFN, MLF), for building assemblies in-house or at a subcontractor will benefit from this course.

Session 1 will take place Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. EST. It will examine why conversion to lead-free solders is necessary and its impact on materials and assembly processes; design issues for lead-free; and laminates for lead-free, lead-free surface finishes and component considerations.

Session 2 is scheduled for Tuesday, July 14, 2009, 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. EST. It will cover design and process guidelines for BGAs and BTCs; backward and forward compatibility: issues and answers; and key strategies in design and manufacturing processes to prevent field returns.

Visit www.smta.org for the complete webtorial description and registration.