White Stain Reduction in Electroplating Process of Flexible Printed Circuit Board by Using Design of Experiment

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Chorkaew Jaturanonda
Punyavee Phiphatthananan
Teeradej Wuttipornpun

Abstract

This research aims to determine a factor setting that can reduce the white stain problem in the electroplating process of flexible printed circuit boards using the QXS model, which on average occurs in 2.77% of one production batch. The performance of inspectors by using attribute agreement analysis (AAA) is first evaluated to ensure that they performed well for checking for a white stain. Second, a factorial experiment with 3 replicates was conducted in order to determine the proper factor setting for the concerned factors, which were the pH of nickel solution, current density, and water changing frequency. The results showed that the proper factor setting was to use the nickel solution with the pH of 3 and a current density of 3.0 A/dm2, and to change the water every day. Based on this setting, the white stain problem was reduced to 0.41%, which would lead to a factory savings cost of 98,000 baht per month on average.

Article Details

Section
Engineering Research Articles

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