Phil Zarrow

Principal Consultant

ITM Consulting

Mr. Zarrow has been involved with PCB assembly for more than thirty years. He is recognized for his expertise in troubleshooting SMT manufacturing and lead-free implementation. He has extensive hands-on experience with set-up and troubleshooting through-hole and SMT processes throughout the world.

Phil Zarrow has submitted responses to the following questions.

HASL Surface Finish and Coplanarity
Be concerned? Be afraid! Be very, very afraid! HASL was wonderful back when it was invented in the mid-70s for ...

Extending Shelf Life for Jars of Solder Paste
I would check with the manufacturer of the solder paste and find out just how conservative they might be with ...

Solder Paste Mixing After Storage
I have found, for conditioning the solder paste, the time-proven (pun intended) method of sitting at ambient works fine. Determine, ...

Bake Tape and Reel Components
Please refer to IPC-JEDEC 033 from IPC or a pdf from MagnaB Eurostat. Also, for further enlightenment on MSD, take ...

How Many Zones Needed for a Lead-free Profile?
The more zones you have, the better you are able to sculpture and hence control the profile. The process window ...

Cause of BGA Solder Joint Bridging
Sure, blame it on the reflow oven and profile - because that's where the bridges happened, right? In reality, you ...

Lead-Free Reflow Soldering
The first thing to do is to determine whether or not your oven has the capacity to adequately reflow your ...

Cleaning PCB Boards with window cleaner?
I would not recommend using window cleaner, if you subject the PCBAs to even the basic cleanliness tests (ionic contamination, ...

Stencil printing foil life-cycle
There are many variables that affect the life of the stencil foil, particularly set-up parameters including squeegee pressure and material. ...

RFID Technology for Pick and Place feeders
Since set up (or mis-set up) is the most common source of pick and place process defects, everything that can ...