What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of Selective Wave Welding?

Why Do We Select Selective Wave Welding?

Double-sided PCBs (assembled using surface mount technology) are the most common board style today because they offer twice the build space compared to traditional through-type PCBs, allowing for smaller, faster, lighter, and more complex products.
However, this requires welding the PCBs via a selective method compared to the wave welding method, which is why selective welding is more prevalent.
Do the advantages of selective welding outweigh the disadvantages?

Advantages

By applying flux locally rather than over the entire surface, you don’t have to mask certain components and avoid test points from being welded.
Surface-mounted components can be weldered without glue (which is necessary to hold the component in place during reflow).
Because the nozzle size is adjustable, different parameters can be set for each component or location in terms of contact time and amount of welder required.
Because selective welding machines require less flux and welder, they are generally cheaper.
Finally, selective welding enables you to process boards that cannot be wave weldered (e.g., boards with high PTH components on both sides). This is arguably the most beneficial feature since the only option is to hand weld the boards.

Disadvantages

For selective welding, a unique program must be created for each circuit board produced, similar to the programs used by surface mount process machines. Creating and fine-tuning these programs can add time and cost to the PCB assembly process.
In theory, selective welding allows each component to be treated differently.
However, there is an increased risk of processing problems because there are so many parameters available. In contrast, a wave welding machine has relatively few parameters to change (conveyor speed, preheat temperature, amount of flux to be applied, and wave height), making it less prone to processing errors.
Although the benefits of selective welding do outweigh the disadvantages in some cases, wave welding is still the most effective way for Bright Quality to weld components into place.

Choose an Experienced Pcbandassembly PCBA Processing and Assembly Service Partner

Pcbandassembly has been providing professional PCB assembly services for many years. From surface mount to through-hole technology to wave welding, we can meet your PCBA processing and assembly requirements. Contact us today to bring speed, efficiency, reliability, and expertise to your PCBA assembly needs.