Electronics manufacturers face more challenges than ever if they want to succeed in a highly competitive environment. On the one hand, the requirement for consistently high quality of the manufactured products dominates, which often requires a certain degree of flexibility in the manufacturing processes. On the other hand, there is price pressure and the overall goal of making manufacturing processes more sustainable in order to be well positioned for the future. The focus is on minimizing material waste, the economical and ecological use of resources and avoiding potential soldering errors.

Most wave soldering systems used in electronic productions are equipped with one or two solder nozzles that generate a turbulent wave. This configuration is ideal for most products, however, this concept reaches its limitations if, for example, PCBs in masks are to be processed.
The reliable wetting of all solder joints is not guaranteed, depending on the thickness of the mask and the size of the cutouts. Additionally, it might be challenging to achieve a reproducible process if the distances between covered SMD components and the THT pins to be soldered are too small. Incomplete solder joints, insufficient hole fill, or solder bridges are typical defects when soldering sophisticated assemblies that are processed in soldering masks.