PartnerTech provides printed circuit board (PCB) assembly on request. Wired elements are assembled in through-hole technology and soldered on the wave soldering machine. The PCB with inserted elements is passed across the pumped wave of melted solder. Typically this process is accompanied by some class of defects like cracks, cavities, wrong solder thickness and poor conductor. In PartnerTech Ltd. another type of defects was observed: dispersion of small droplets of solder around holes. Quality assurance department plans to optimize the process in order to reduce the number of defects. In the first stage, it was necessary to develop a methodology for counting defects. This paper presents experimental design and analysis related to this project.

The key goal of this study was to characterize polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) based composites with the addition of bronze particles and mineral fibers/particles. The addition of individual fillers was as follows: bronze—30–60 wt.%, glass fibers—15–25 wt.%, coke flakes—25 wt.% and graphite particles—5 wt.%. Both static and dynamic tests were performed and the obtained results were compared with the microscopic structure of the obtained fractures. The research showed that the addition of 60 wt.% bronze and other mineral fillers improved the values obtained in the static compression test and in the case of composites with 25 wt.% glass fibers the increase was about 60%. Fatigue tests have been performed for the compression-compression load up to 100,000 cycles. All tested composites show a significant increase in the modulus as compared to the values obtained in the static compression test. The highest increase in the modulus in the dynamic test was obtained for composites with 25 wt.% of glass fibers (increase by 85%) and 25 wt.% of coke flakes (increase by 77%), while the lowest result was obtained for the lowest content of bronze particles (decrease by 8%). Dynamic tests have shown that composites with “semi-spherical” particles are characterized by the longest service life and a slower fatigue crack propagation rate than in the case of the long glass fibers. In addition, studies have shown that particles with smaller sizes and more spherical shape have a higher ability to dissipate mechanical energy, which allows their use in friction nodes. On the other hand, composites with glass fiber and graphite particles can be successfully used in applications requiring high stiffness with low amplitude vibrations.

In the paper authors presented the application of specific method of assessment chosen properties of coating layer, that give additional information strictly connected with its tribology properties. Nanotomography techniques and 3D image processing gives quantitative and qualitative information about the testing sample, with no negative effects on the exanimating layer. Two samples, one with and one without the laser treatment were tested, measured and obtained results presented and discussed. Those preliminary research shown that proposed method can be recommended to application as a supplementary test of the properties coating layers and for verification of technological process parameters on the stage of working out the production process.

Electro-spark deposition (ESD) and laser beam machining (LBM) are the technologies using the concentrated energy flux. This paper deals with the issue of the impact of laser modification on the morphology and mechanical properties of carbide/copper coatings produced by electro-spark treatment. The coatings were applied to C45 carbon steel samples using the EIL-8A device. The following three types of electrodes made using the powder metallurgy (PM) hot pressing technique, from copper and tungsten carbide powders of different percentage compositions, were used for the coatings: 25% WC and 75% Cu; 50% WC and 50% Cu; and 75% WC and 25% Cu. Laser modification of the surface layers was performed with an Nd:YAG laser. The research focused on the analysis of the morphology of coatings applied by electro-spark technology before and after laser processing. The analysis of the morphology of electro-spark coatings revealed that the coatings had microcracks and pores. The laser beam machining of ESD coatings led to the homogenization of chemical composition, fragmentation of the structure, and elimination of microcracks. In addition, measurements of porosity, microhardness, adhesion, and analysis of XRD phase composition of the electro-spark coatings were performed. Laser processing proved to have a positive effect on improving the adhesion of coatings and reducing their porosity. This paper also presents a simulation model of heat transfer processes for the case of laser radiation impact on a WC-Cu coating. The developed numerical model, describing the influence of laser treatment on the distribution of temperature fields in the heated material (at a given depth) is of significant importance in the development of treatment technologies. Laser-modified ESD coatings perform anti-wear and protective functions, which enable their potential application in means of transport such as rolling stock.

The ferritic-austenitic stainless steel was obtained by sintering the mixture of ferritic stainless steel AISI 434L powders with different amount of additions: Mn, Ni and Si. The structure of obtained sintered samples was investigated by computer image analysis methods. In porous materials the character of the pore structure strongly effects on its mechanical properties. Accurate information about pores shape is important information for technological process and quality control of produced materials as well. The images of the porous microstructure were analyzed using ADCIS Aphelion analytical software. Analyzed pores have complex and irregular shapes and thus authors decided to appoint different shape factors to obtain its proper quantitative description. Data obtained from image analysis process were statistically analyzed. Authors used a special resampling approach known as smooth bootstrapping to smoothing cumulative empirical distributions. The results obtained during resampling procedure have been compared with raw data from verification set and guidelines for the application of the proposed approach have been formulated. The validity of the proposed approach was positively verified and it significantly improved quality of the results. The smoothing and imputing of data allow to avoid numerical artifacts that may arise during the classical statistical calculations on irregular data originated from image analysis obtained from sintered samples. Efficient, reliable and relatively fast method for accessing the distribution of any others quantitative parameters describing microstructure of the materials is very interesting proposal for wide spectrum of application.