Operation Broken Pin

Pinned Down in Silicon Valley

Circuit Technology Center’s Sal Moxy and the Circuit Board detectives.

Chapter 1: The Problem

Broken pin on a pin grid array.

Sometimes all you need to get through the darkest part of the day is a ray of hope. When you’re awakened in the dark pre-dawn hours and a threatening day is ahead, hope can start your heart like a shot of adrenaline. Hope of that kind was the glimmer that lit Miguel Esperanto in the murk of a Silicon Valley morning. A heavy cloud of doom had hung over him since he had committed a serious error late the day before. An aura of delayed repercussions wavered around his heart. But a little light shined through to brighten his view as he remembered Circuit Technology Center. He recalled seeing Jeff Ferry, the CEO of Circuit Technology Center at a conference a few years back. He remembered Jeff was the Chairman of the IPC Repairability Sub-Committee and that Jeff’s company would be a legitimate group to call if ever they had a damaged circuit and were in need of help. A few years back Miguel was a little more arrogant, a little more dogmatic, he couldn’t believe people would make the kind of mistakes Jeff was describing. However, he had gained wisdom as experience had shown him that despite the best-laid plans errors, well, you know, errors happened. Now was one of those times, but Miguel wasn’t sure if even Circuit Technology Center could help him now.

Broken pin repaired by soldering on a specially modified new pin.

Yesterday, the nightmare of nightmares occurred. While working with an extremely expensive prototype component, Miguel had broken off one of the pins at the component body. Miguel was very skilled with his hands but this component was a challenge. It was a giant three-inch ceramic pin grid array with over 500 pins. The pin size to plated through hole inside diameter ratio was extremely tight. He encountered serious difficulty getting all the pins into the holes at the same time. The slightest tilt or bend would throw the insertion off. It seemed that there was always one or two pins that would bend over causing him to have to pull the component out, re-straighten the pins and reinsert. On the last try, as he was pulling the component out of the board, one of the pins became caught in a mangled plated through hole and snapped off at the body. It was at the end of the day, Miguel had been distracted, losing patience and should have put the project aside earlier, but now it was too late and he was in deep. He looked in horror at the pin stuck in the board, incapable of believing what had just happened. There, stuck in the board were thousands of dollars and 12 weeks of lead-time. It was a difficult cost to bear and an intolerable lead-time. He had been entrusted to work with this component because he was the best and most reliable technician in the company. The engineer he was working with was out for the day and Miguel was trying to get a head start with this component so he wouldn’t have to fit and solder it while people were looking over his shoulder. He was happy that the component had come in a day early. That was until now.

Later in the pre-dawn he pulled onto Route 880 into the deep moss of a San Jose winter drizzle. Even at this hour he knew Circuit Technology Center would be ready to handle his call so he dialed with one hand while slowly following the red brake lights ahead.

When Sal Moxy, the customer service engineer of Circuit Technology Center, picked up the phone the voice at the other end sounded sleepy and troubled. Sal momentarily feared that the person had mistakenly dialed his number instead of the Suicide Hotline. His fears were soon eased when Miguel launched into the reason for his call. As soon as Sal understood that it was a pin broken off at the body of a ceramic component he had some immediate reservations.

“Gee, Miguel what’s left on the component to make a connection?”

“Well, Sal there is the shoulder of the pin which is about twice as wide as the pin itself. It sits .015” above the surface of the ceramic. The other thing to note is that even though there are a lot of pins there is pretty good spacing around the each one. What do you think Sal?” Miguel described as he finally warmed up to the challenge at hand. Taking just this small action was better than just waiting for the axe to fall.

Sal was still worried about the extent of the damage, but he didn’t want to discourage Miguel. “OK Miguel. It sounds like something we might have a shot at repairing, but I have to tell you up front that I don’t believe there is any IPC procedure for the kind of thing we would be attempting.” He didn’t want to mislead Miguel into thinking this type of repair was an industry routine. Sal knew he had some pretty inventive repair technicians and engineers available. That gave them the flexibility to go places where others hadn’t been, but he also knew that some customers were constrained by their nature or by contract to stick very closely to approved industry standards.

“No problem Sal, this is prototype stuff. If you can get me back up and running, that will give me time to get this insertion routine straight or permit me to convince someone to get the holes expanded so I can avoid this in the future.” Miguel laid it on the line, “ Sal if you can fix this thing you may be saving my job.”

Sal heard the desperation in Miguel’s voice and knew that if he was kidding he still wasn’t far from the truth. “Miguel, I guarantee you we’ll give this top priority and we’ll pull out all the stops to come up with a procedure.”

“Thanks Sal, you’ll have this monster in your hands first thing tomorrow morning.”

When Sal hung up he felt a slight twinge in his stomach as he worried that this wasn’t something Circuit Technology Center could reliably fix and that Miguel would indeed be in very hot water if he was forced to obtain a new part. Sal resolved right then and there to do everything he could to convince his folks to devise a workable solution.

To view Frequently Asked Questions about how to send boards to Circuit Technology Center click here.


Chapter 2: The Examination

Miguel Esperanto of Salvation Circuits found himself in a real jam. It was he who had last touched the company’s loadstar and now that loadstar had lost some of its shine. His head had been swimming with guilt and his heart was heavy with despair until he thought of the possibility of a Circuit Technology Center solution. The component at issue, the one with the broken pin, was now at CTC. Earlier Miguel had told the engineer in charge of the project, Rich Hahtaiyre about what happened and Rich had collapsed in a spasm of shallow breaths, sweating and palpitations. An ambulance had to be called and Rich was carted away for observation. Aye yay yay! To see Rich off there was a gathering of concerned citizens and the company President was now involved so Miguel reluctantly told him the story. Miguel had to tell the Chesus Eli, the President, that Salvation Circuits’ flagship new product (a powerful switching system enhancement) was now in jeopardy of not meeting it’s deadline. In fact if this component pin fix didn’t work they would slip on their delivery by twelve weeks and that would probably cost them their biggest customer for this product. If looks could kill, Miguel would be in a morgue by now. To make things worse the recriminations between the bean counters, engineers and operations types began to fly over who nixed the ordering of a second prototype part. Miguel had to run for cover, he wasn’t qualified to handle that kind of heat. All he could do now was wait. On the other hand he could call Circuit Technology Center every hour on the hour to ensure they were taking his cause to heart. That would make feel as if he was doing a little something to help and allow him to report every little changing nuance of the repair to whoever might inquire.

Quite a group gathered round when that monster California component arrived at Circuit Technology Center. It was packaged with great care and anticipation mounted as the swaddling was unwound strip by strip. Earlier Sal had given the heads up to Teddy Tallarines, a technician who specialized in unusual repairs that Miguel’s monster would be coming in. Jeff Ferry, Giddy the Salesman and Slobodan the floor supervisor all came over to appraise the situation. They took the component over to the Predator Zoom microscope to get a 50X look at the location of the break. There was excited conversation, gesticulation and numerous drawings as the group bandied about various solutions. A gold plated lead was broken off from a large ceramic component. This lead was close to half an inch long and would have to be attached to a very small area at the base; a shoulder or a nub was all that was left in the dense thicket of pins. Somehow they would have to get tools required to hold and attach the pin into a very small opening. Whatever repair was affected would have to endure the mechanical stress of insertion as well as the thermal stress of soldering temperatures when it was placed back in the board. It all sounded a little shaky. However they finally they came up with a plan that they thought just might work. Sal left to call Miguel and review the projected fix and timetable.

When Miguel heard from Sal he was thrilled that there was even a reasonable chance of success at a fraction of the cost of the component. He gave the go ahead and hoped for the best – he said that his whole department was hanging on the success of this endeavor.


Chapter 3: The Solution

Back at Circuit Technology Center, Teddy Tallarines was chosen by Slobo, the service floor supervisor to do the job and no one would have questioned the choice. The task of replacing a 0.3 inch long golden pin broken off from a three-inch square ceramic component was going to be challenging and there were few established guidelines for this kind of operation. Teddy loved the attention of high profile jobs and reveled in the excitement of this unusual task. He wasn’t sure they could successfully replace the pin but he understood the plan and was ready and willing to give it a go.

Right away Teddy chose five separate replacement pins and ran them by the engineers. They chose a pin that had the same gold plating as the original yet it had a slightly widened base and that was the key feature to affecting this repair because the first step was to hollow out the end that would be placed on the component base. Teddy set up a high speed, precision drill press fitted with an ultra small carbide end mill, fiber optic light and a zoom microscope. He drilled a hole into a piece of FR4 and fitted the pin flush in the hole to stabilize it for the hollowing process. Next, for a depth of .050” he milled the center of the pin out leaving only a thin wall around the circumference of the pin. He filled the hollow of the pin with high temperature solder. On the base of the component he also tinned the remaining gold nub with high temperature solder.

“How’s it going?” Sal cautiously queried when he saw that Teddy was in between steps and Slobo was with him discussing how to attach the pin to the body. It could be a combat zone out there when it came to asking questions on sensitive projects. When he overheard Slobo was going to check up on the progress Sal followed in his wake like a submarine on the prowl in the baffles of an aircraft carrier. He had to be able to say something to Miguel who had now made a living out of calling, emailing and faxing his beleaguered vendor.

“So far so good.” Slobo growled in his finest wolverine tone.

Fortunately for Sal, Teddy was in a talkative mood. “Well, I have the pin basically prepared as they told me, now I’m just putting together a fixture to hold the pin in place in order to solder it to the gold nub. I’m just going to take a little strip of FR4 and drill some holes with spacing identical to the component’s pin spacing. They’ll be a little undersized so it will fit snugly onto the pins. They’ll be three holes, one on either side of the nub and the one holding the pin above the nub. That way I can get my tools into the open spot without struggling to hold on to the pin.”

Sal smiled inwardly knowing that Teddy probably would have gone on for another few minutes if Slobo didn’t give him gentle (in a growling sort of way) encouragement to continue the job. Sal was continually amazed at what he would see from Teddy. Teddy hadn’t completed high school and could be difficult to decipher when he rattled on, but his gut level knowledge of these materials was breath taking. He had spent his whole adult life working in the industry and he very intently absorbed every touch, smell and sound of rework and repair. He could finesse solder like a snake charmer could charm a snake. The next step of soldering the lead to the component was the most important. If Teddy could manage that, the rest of the process would be a breeze. With the new pin sitting on the tinned pad with its FR4 support he warmed the component. He had the component sitting on a heated table, under his watchful gaze using a zoom microscope with Halogen lighting. He had placed a thermal couple near the base of the pin to monitor his heating step. Next he added some flux and brought down a PACE Thermoflo air pencil to bring the junction point of the pin and the component to the high temperature solder reflow point. He waited until he attained reflow counted five second and then carefully removed his hot air pen to prevent a disturbed joint. He turned of the power to the table and the whole assemble began a slow cool down.

Teddy went to Slobo and Jeff to tell them the critical element was complete and that they could inspect the joint and pin once it cooled down. He stopped by Sal’s desk and said, “I think I have something that you want.” in a singsong voice.

“Oh, what’s that?” Sal asked assuming Teddy’s upbeat mood meant good news, but knowing better than to show it.

“That monster is ready to look at.” Teddy said coyly.

“How did it go?” Said Sal playing along. Long experience at this game had given him vast reserves of patience.

“I don’t know. I did the best I could.” Fainted Teddy then happily adding that he thought Quality would OK it.

Just then a call came through from Miguel and Sal was able to give him the latest. On the West coast the clouds were lifting.


Chapter 4: The Conclusion

The results of the pin to component soldering were better than Quality had dared to hope. Once that step was approved a super strength epoxy was added around the base of the pin to stabilize it. Like a procession of Cardinals before the Pope, Quality, Jeff, Slobo, Sal and many others reviewed the component and murmured appreciation. Over the intercom system came the call, “Sal Moxy. You have a call on line one. Sal. Miguel is on line one.” Sal had become closer to Miguel than his wife over the past 48 hours as every detail of Miguel and Salvation Circuits trials and tribulations was laid before him. Sal felt good that he could at least participate in their ascension from the mire of their situation.

“Miguel. How the heck are ya?” Said Sal enthusiastically.

“Good. Good Sal. Sounds like you might have some good news for me.”

Sal proceeded to give Miguel the blow by blow because he knew Miguel liked the details. Additionally, he knew Miguel would have to explain the solution many times to many people at Salvation Circuits so he wanted to give him all the ammunition he needed to do that comfortably. He went through the kind of pin chosen, the hollowing out process, the high temperature soldering etc. He described all the tools that were utilized.

At Saint Mary’s Hospital the Salvation Circuits group gathered around Rich Hahtaiyre’s bed as the company President Chesus Eli gave Rich the blow by blow of how they had received the component, fired up the board, placed the board in its system and were putting the system through its paces as they spoke. There were smiles, jokes and laughter all around as they knew they had comeback from a very dark place and were now back on schedule. Miguel had gone from goat to hero as just remembering to send the component to CTC had seemed like a stroke of brilliance. Once he was securely seen in that light he made haste to move on in his day as he didn’t want the glow to wear off and folks to remember who was responsible for this mess in the first place.

Note: Many of the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not so innocent.

Several members of the Circuit Technology Center team contributed to this feature story.