EasySpheres’ Best Practices Approach Provides Customers with Quality, Efficiency and Flexibility Worldwide

By Doug Farlow, VP Sales & Marketing

Headquartered in Oregon and established more than 17 years ago, EasySpheres Incis an exclusive worldwide provider of high–quality, first run solder balls at reasonable quantities and excellent prices. “We endeavor to become your first source and technical guide to many of the solder attach and bumping challenges that you face today,” said CEO Eric Baker. EasySpheres is a leading global supplier of high–performance interconnecting materials and related services for the electronic and micro-component assembly markets.

The company maintains a large inventory of sphere alloys and sizes, and specializes in the fulfillment of small orders. EasySpheres prides itself on always guaranteeing quick delivery. This is accomplished in the specialized manner in which it manages its inventory, shipping all orders within 24 hours, and making the ordering process as easy and efficient as possible for customers.

Baker added, “The concept of EasySpheres was borne of the idea that many end user applications for solder balls require smaller unit quantities than most sphere manufacturers are willing to provide.” The company combines this concept with guaranteed immediate delivery, easy online ordering and fulfillment, and a broad range of stock for the most popular alloys and sizes.

“Our business growth has been realized in the belief that great customer service, immediate delivery and broad choice options are meaningful to our customers,” he added. “We enjoy more than a 97 percent on time customer delivery rate for small and large orders, which in turn allows us to appreciate a very loyal and developing customer base.”

EasySpheres has the satisfaction of working with many of the innovators in the United States and worldwide electronics manufacturing community. It serves customers in the aerospace, consumer, EMS, medical, semiconductor and BGA rework manufacturing markets.

Baker said that EasySpheres’ goal is to provide customers and distribution partners with instant online access to a broad inventory of solder spheresizes and alloys that can be shipped quickly against demand. The company has developed and maintains a state-of-the-art e-commerce portal that features an easy-to-use login, allowing customers to create a custom account, check inventory, receive or save a quote, and process an order in a quick and simple manner. Orders of stock items are processed by credit card or purchase order the same day, and are shipped via UPS for fast, reliable delivery. New customers are offered automatic Net30 Day payment terms to accommodate same day shipping. Unlike many of its competitors, EasySpheres can ship any quantityof solder spheres from 10,000 to several million. Quick response quotes for any order quantity are also available.

The company provides a range of products, including leaded alloys, lead-free alloys, tape-and-reel spheres and copper spheres. EasySpheres are available in many solder alloys, including eutectic tin/lead and high lead, typical for ceramic BGA packages, as well as many of the industry demanded lead-free solder alloys, including low silver alloy formulas. A range of sphere diameters for BGA and CSP ball attach applications are available from 0.002-0.035“.

• Leaded Alloys

EasySpheres Sn10Pb90 Solder Balls and Sn20Pb80, Sn62Pb36Ag02, Sn63Pb37 Solder Spheres are manufactured and designed to support optimized ball-attach applications of ball grid array (BGA) and chip scale package (CSP) components. EasySpheres are packaged to resist surface darkening induced by transit tumbling, which produces reduced machine vision faults in ball placement systems. All products are packed in medical–grade ESD-safe containers. Additionally, its solder balls are compliant to J-STD-006 and are QR coded for lot conformance traceability and shipping accuracy.

• Lead-Free Alloys

EasySpheres Sn42Bi58, SAC 105, SAC305, SAC405 and SAC350 Solder Spheres are manufactured and designed to support optimized ball-attach applications of BGA and CSP components. All EasySpheres conform to rigorous quality inspection requirements to include, spheresize and tolerance uniformity, sphericity, alloy purity (per IPC JST006C), manufacturing date to shelf viability and storage history.

• Tape-and-Reel Spheres

EasySpheres Solder Ball Strips, SN63PB37, SAC305 and SN10PB90 taped solder spheres allow customers to use existing pick–and–place equipment to automate the placement of the company’s spheres for all re–balling projects. Packaged in compliance to EIA-481-E standard with industry–standard 8mm polycarbonate tape, EasySpheres taped spheres work with most pick–and–place tape feeders. Customers can leverage excess placement machine capacity while gaining the benefits of accuracy and speed from their existing pick–and–place platforms. 

• Copper Spheres

EasySpheres Solid Copper Spheres are manufactured to the highest industry standards. With an ultra-high melting temperature of 1080°C, these non-collapsible spheres allow for extremely high package density, while maintaining nominal standoff height for easier cleaning and encapsulation. The spheres offer excellent electrical conductivity as well assuperior thermal conductivity and heat dissipation.EasySpheres CU-100-XX solder spheres as well as SnNi Plated CUEZPL-XX solder spheres are sold in MOQ of 10,000 spheres or more. For both products, stock sizes range from 0.012–0.020″ with stable SPC precision manufacturing standards for tight dimensional quality control.

Another important aspect of EasySpheres is its product labeling. A few years ago, and ahead of the competition, EasySpheres took on a new quality directive to improve sphere inventory lot number traceability for customers. “What seems like common sense in following best practices for our industry has provided us with a clear advantage in our ability to respond to downstream process issues related to our solder spheres,” added Baker.

EasySpheres stores and packages all spheres in anti-static, polypropylene Jars with color coded screw top lids. Each jar holds a moisture desiccant barrier to protect against relative humidity fluctuations. Product labels include part number, quantity per jar, alloy, diameter in inches and mm, date of expiry, lot code number and scannable QR code. With each product that it ships, EasySpheres includes a Manufacturers Certificate of Conformance that contains each of these values as well. The Certificate of Conformance identifies the manufacturing standard, sphere brightness, alloy purity limits vs. actual, size variance distribution and sphericity distribution for each size/alloy sphere. Additionally, the company maintains order documentation of each sphere it ships with customer order specifics for a period of 5 years.

So, what makes EasySpheres unique? Baker concluded, “Well, as you can see, actually quite a lot. Our ‘best practices’approach to serving our customers provides product traceability, customer confidence and is just plain good business.” 

For more information, contact Eric Baker, President, at 12012 SW Powell Butte Hwy, Powell Butte, OR 97753; 858-486-4068; E-mail: feedback@easyspheres.com; Web site: www: easyspheres.com.