In the 21 st century, the rapidly evolving technological developments make educators constantly reassess the content of engineering curricula in the context of emerging fields. Therefore it is a must to create, apply, and evaluate innovative educational techniques and methods for the incorporation of these novel subjects into the engineering disciplines without compromising the cultivation of the traditional skills. In this case, Internet is rapidly being adopted in engineering education as a

more »

... ol for enhancing the educational experience of students residing on campus as well as to expand the reach of unique programs beyond the local campus. In the last few years, increasing product complexity, decreasing component size, and using double sided boards have made Electronics Manufacturing (EM) assembly lines more difficult and the economic troubleshooting of EM defects is one of the main problems facing all manufacturers. Dispensing, placement and reflow steps have been relatively improved with fully automated, accurate assembly machines and the use of robots. Although the authors have made significant improvements, it has been shown that the outcomes of the automated line have not produced a high enough level of the reliable yield percentage yet. The objective of this current development is to make a contribution towards these EM processes by creating an interactive E-Manufacturing system of circuit board defects so that the defects that necessitate rework operation can be detected through EM assembly line. This system is also used as an educational tool in undergraduate and graduate level automated manufacturing courses to make the users more knowledgeable about the cutting-edge industrial trouble-shooting techniques. carefully to prevent the solder joints from burning. Uniformity of temperature across the board and within a component is a primary goal of any reflow system. Current Development Laser soldering is a common reflow process practiced in EM and rework. None of the other attachment processes has potentially been practiced in rework since laser's localized application feature makes it the best for attachment. As can be seen in Figure 2 , the authors have developed an e-manufacturing computer software tool for the laser reflow. This developed system uses VB 5.0. This system will also be included into the final EM system eventually. The data and knowledge available in the system were collected from various numbers of catalogs, handbooks, technical papers, and textbooks. The information gathered was tabulated into Excel data folders based on laser and solder type, and then they were all coded into the system. The developed system for the laser reflow runs as follows: After clicking on the "Reflow" tab four buttons are displayed on the window. Each of those buttons is labeled with a different process that could be used in that step. Next the user selects one of the buttons, we will use [Laser]. This results in the parameters for laser reflowing. Some of the parameters are Laser Source, Beam Power, and Scan Speed etc. This particular process provides all of the values in drop-down lists for the user. Once all the required information is selected the user can click on [Evaluate Settings] to evaluate the settings and return the outcome of actually implementing this set of parameter values in the electronics manufacturing process. The knowledge collected and the outcomes of the system developed have been doublechecked and benchmarked with the experimental tests performed at the Iowa Laser Inc. and UNI Material Testing Lab. The joints that have solder balls, unformed joints, bridging, voids, and bent were classified as 'unreliable'. The ones that have no such things were called 'reliable'. Industrial profits Although automated surface mounted EM and rework stations have been developed in the past, none of them was able to remove the rework process out of the EM line. Now one possible solution is detecting the problems causing the joint level defects and trying to find some process level solutions to obtain high quality, defect-free outcomes. In order to accomplish this objective