Hi team,
Posting for a colleague:
We are experiencing yield issues due to soldering of TI Device TPA2038D1. We noticed many soldering failures on this device as bridging of solder happens between solder balls .
SMT engineer at our manufacturing facility conducted root-cause analysis and mentioned the solder ball clearance on our stencil design is too close. This low clearance causing issues on re-flow soldering and making shorts.
They suggested to modify the stencil to increase the clearance between solder balls from 0.16mm to 0.18mm.
I checked the TI design guidelines ((http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/mxbg144b/mxbg144b.pdf).The solder paste clearance mentioned is 0.15mm, which is smaller than what we have on our design(0.16mm). Also on the example, the rectangular shape with rounded corners shown for solder paste. Let us know if there any benefits for rectangular pad with rounded corners design over circular pad?
SMT engineer at our contract manufacturing facility suggested slightly changing the pitch of solder paste openings to 0.42mm instead of 0.4mm to increase the clearance to 0.18mm (The solder paste opening dia is 0.24mm).Let us know if this is advisable for this device?
Thanks,
Nate
