What is the difference between wave soldering and manual soldering?

From the comparison between wave soldering and manual soldering, we can see that wave soldering has many advantages such as good soldering quality, high efficiency, strong flexibility, low defect rate, less pollution, and diverse soldering components. It is the best choice for high reliability electronic product PCBA soldering.

1. Welding efficiencyTraditional manual soldering requires many people to use point-to-point soldering for PCBs. Relatively speaking, the efficiency is relatively low, while wave soldering adopts industrial batch production in a streamlined manner. Different sizes of welding nozzles can be used for batch welding, and the welding efficiency is dozens of times higher than manual welding. As for wave soldering, it adopts a one-time welding form, which uses fixtures to pass through the furnace, allowing all plugs to be welded in one go, greatly improving welding efficiency.

2. FlexibilityFor circuit boards with small spacing between components, the flexibility and controllability of traditional manual soldering are better than using equipment, because the accuracy of machine soldering depends on operational issues. For boards with dense components, manual soldering is more effective. Moreover, for circuit boards that are not resistant to high temperatures, passing through the furnace is not feasible and can only be solved by hand soldering. Therefore, for circuit boards with small spacing or special non high temperature components, manual soldering is a better choice.

3. Welding qualityIn manual welding, it is quite difficult to control the solder joints, solder amount, welding moisture, and quality control of the tinning rate of the metalized holes, especially when the pins of electronic components are gold-plated. Before welding, it is necessary to remove the gold and tin from the solder lead welding position, which is a relatively difficult operation for manual welding. With the increase of PCB board density and circuit board thickness, the soldering heat capacity increases, and soldering with a soldering iron is prone to insufficient heat, resulting in virtual soldering or through-hole soldering height that does not meet the requirements.