Joe Belmonte

Principal Consultant

ITM Consulting

Mr. Belmonte has been a process engineer and process engineering manager in the electronic manufacturing industry for over 25 years, with experience in all aspects of electronic product assembly operations. He is well-known throughout Asia and SE Asia for both his process work and teaching engagements.

Joe Belmonte has submitted responses to the following questions.

Separate wash systems for leaded and non-lead boards?
Speedline Technologies and Zestron are currently doing experiments on this topic and will have a paper with the results of ...

RoHS existing products vs. new products
There are folks far more knowledgeable than I on the RoHS Regulations, however I think you are incorrect. The way ...

Can I use my old oven for lead-free reflow?
Additional information will be required to provide an answer to this question. Virtually any but not all existing reflow oven ...

Is it possible to run Pb-Free reflow without nitrogen?
In a one word answer YES. We have many customers operating lead free processes without Nitrogen. However we have other ...

AOI or X-Ray inspection?
No right or wrong answer to this question. You should consider both. Both X-Ray and AOI have their advantages and ...

Regarding lead free, can I use the reflow ovens I currently have in production?
Almost any reflow oven MAY be capable of soldering lead free materials depending on the mass of the product, cycle ...

Problems with solder paste stencils
The first thing to do is calculate the area ratio of the stencil aperture. If the area ratio is below ...

Reflow soldering lead free components creates tombstones
There are several factors that impact the frequency of component tombstoning. Factors that impact tombstoning include: Printed circuit board component ...

Reflow oven profilers
This is a common question. Running reflow ovens without a profiler is not recommend. You can not correct what you ...

0805 vs. 0603 availability
This question was recently asked by a customer to the SMTA. The following answer was provided by Tom Borkes. I ...

Stencil printing foil life-cycle
This is a question that has been asked many many times for a long long time. The short answer is ...

Solder Paste Inspection
There are several factors to consider. First you must determine what type of post print inspection you want to implement. ...

Should we buy new low cost assembly equipment?
Purchasing capital equipment for electronic manufacturing operations should never be a purchasing/buyer function it must be an engineering function. One ...

Tin Whiskers
I am not an expert on Tin Whiskers, but everything I have read or been told by experts is that ...