Prototyping of Electric Tweezer-Type Soldering Iron Device With Flexible Fingers for SMD

This paper proposes a new tweezer-type soldering iron device. The aim of this device is to make it easier for someone to remove defective small surface mount devices (SMDs) from the high density circuit board. Removal of small SMDs is difficult because of the size and small working space. The proposed device has two flexible fingers to grip small SMDs stably. The opening and closing operation of the two fingers are motorized. Moreover, the two heated metal tips of the tweezer-type soldering iron are divided into the two metal tips unitized into one unit and the one heater, and it is therefore made possible to easily exchange only the metal tips. The proposed electric tweezer-type soldering iron device with flexible fingers is prototyped. From experimental results, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed device are verified. In a rework test, a small SMD of 1.2mm × 0.6mm in size has been removed from the circuit board and the operation time has achieved less than 10 seconds.