The Challenge of a Self-Soldering PCB

In the most commonly used soldering process, reflow soldering, it is necessary to heat the system to stably transfer the required energy to the product during the soldering process. 70 percent of the heat energy of a machine is used for self-heating, the rest for soldering. In a current project, the possibility of realizing the heating necessary for soldering by embedding a Joule heating element in the printed circuit board is investigated. To realize this, the board must be mechanically contacted. These contacts must meet the following requirements: The necessary energy must be transferred and the handling of the board must be robust and simple. There are several contact methods that have been developed and tested. The experiments mainly relate to contact resistance, reliability and flexibility of the contact method.