Case Study: Leading Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing Company achieves high-precision PCB stress measurement and reduced solder-joint failures with Advantech

A High-Precision Stress Measurement Solution for Printed Circuit Boards

Leading Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing Company was experiencing increased fractured tin solder joints as PCBs became thinner and moved to weaker lead-free solders, creating a critical need to measure and control mechanical stress during production. To address early-stage defect detection, they turned to Advantech for a high-precision stress measurement system using Advantech’s MIC-7500 compact modular computer and the PCIE-1813 strain measurement card among other signal-conditioning components.

Advantech implemented a modular solution combining the MIC-7500, PCIE-1813 4-channel 26-bit (±31.25 mV/V, 38 kS/s) bridge input card, PCLD-8813 signal conditioning and PCLD-8811 filtering to provide built-in excitation voltage, synchronized multichannel sampling, and high-resolution strain detection. The 26-bit simultaneous sampling enabled detection of minute resistance changes from strain gauges, allowing early detection of stress-related defects, reducing solder-joint failures, improving production yield, and offering scalable, cost-effective deployment across the customer’s lines.