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The wetting balance is used for the measurement of solderability of electronic components. The wetting force is measured dynamically and the technique gives information about both the degree and the speed of wetting. For practical quality assessment of electronic components, a simple‐to‐use index is required that incorporates the data on both degree and speed of wetting. The index must also have a uniform discrimination between different wetting properties, across the full range encountered in practical soldering. This paper reviews critically the numerous indices suggested in the literature, and supports with quantitative data the choices previously made subjectively in some soldering standards.

The wetting balance is being used as the focal point to establish a quantitative measurement capability for solderability of electronic components of all configurations. This paper considers the factors influencing solderability measurement that arise directly from the thermal design and construction materials of the wetting balance instrument. The work is illustrated by the differences between the three commercial wetting balances currently manufactured within the European Community.

An experimental method for measurement system improvement is presented and applied to development of a protocol for solderability measurement with a wetting balance. Protocol development is central to development of reliable monitoring systems for manufacturing. This paper illustrates the method with an experiment in which sets of nearly identical test leads, each with a different solderability, are obtained by steam ageing of hot‐solder‐dipped copper and then measured according to alternative protocols. The protocols entail different flux types and solder bath temperatures. This method can be used wherever solderability measurements are made and thus satisfies the need for in‐house refinement of wetting balance protocols.With the experimental method, one can both compare alternative measurement protocols and estimate the relative solderability of sets of test leads. The results of both depend on what feature of the wetting force curve one selects to portray solderability. The comparison of measurement protocols is based on what is variously called precision, sensitivity, or signal‐to‐noise ratio. The solderability estimates show that different physical properties of the test leads affect different parts of the wetting force curve, and that changes in the steam ageing procedure affect solderability in a generally predictable way.

A gold plated nickel solderability reference material has been developed. The as‐plated material has very good solderability, which can be degraded in a controlled manner by heat treatment to form a poorly solderable surface containing nickel oxide. Three heat treatments were used to give four different sample conditions. This allows testing of the wetting balance over a wide range with various IEC fluxes. The material has a shelf life of at least two years which confers two major advantages compared with existing reference material types. First, since no sample preparation is required the material is easy to use and secondly a large batch can be made, so ensuring that reproducibility between various machines and operators is maximised.

The wetting balance has been identified as a technique suitable for the establishment of a quantitative basis for the measurement of the solderability of electronic components. This paper deals with those parameters of the instrument and those procedures of the measurement that fall within the choice of the operator. It is important to know the amount of attention that must be paid to each parameter to achieve the precision required.

The three European Community manufacturers of commercially available wetting balances for measuring the solderability of electronic components have participated in an intercomparison assessment of surfaces of standard solderability that have the potential for calibrating the balance instruments. The development of the standard surfaces, as well as the small adjustments needed to improve the uniformity of design of the different instruments, and the standardisation of the procedures for their use, have been described in the preceding papers in this series. This paper gives details of the experimental procedures used for the intercomparison and the significance of the comparative data from each balance type.

To establish a measurement scale for the solderability of electronic components using the wetting balance, there is a requirement for a set of standard reference surfaces of defined solderabilities to calibrate the instrument and the measurement chain. Ideally, a single material will be used, whose surface can be tuned to a given solderability by a well characterised procedure. This paper describes the development of ranges of solderable surfaces suitable for calibrating wetting balances and other solderability test and measurement methods.

The role of M in the Bond films has altered radically in the modern Bond franchise – due in part to the casting of Dame Judi Dench as M. This chapter argues that M as portrayed by Dench asserts a monarch-like power and authority in her role as Bond’s commander, an authority that can be compared to that of the current monarch Queen Elizabeth II in both her real and imagined performances. It will examine how M as depicted by Dench fits into the legacy of the male M’s that came before her. It then compares the problematic relationship for both women with motherhood; their common refusal to employ emotive feminine manipulation to maintain their authority and how this authority utilises language and address. In doing so it will assert that both Dench’s M and Queen Elizabeth II put duty and their professional lives first – devoting themselves to the service of others.

In this chapter, we investigate two-way causality between health and the hourly wage. We employ insights from the human capital and compensating wage differential models, a panel formed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and dynamic panel estimation methods in this investigation. We adopt plausible specifications in which a change in health induces a change in the wage with a lag and a change in the wage induces a change in health, also with a lag. We uncover a causal relationship between two of the five measures of health and the wage in which a reduction in health leads to an increase in the wage rate in a panel of US young adults who had completed their formal schooling by 2006 and were continuously employed from that year through 2011. There is no evidence of a causal relationship running from the wage rate to health in this panel. The former result highlights the multidimensional nature of health. It is consistent with an extension of the compensating wage differential model in which a large amount of effort in one period is required to obtain promotions and the wage increases that accompany them in subsequent periods. That effort may cause reductions in health and to a negative effect of health in the previous period on the current period wage. In this framework, employees have imperfect information about the effort requirements of a particular job when they are hired, and employers have imperfect information about the amount of effort new hirers are willing to exert. The result is also consistent with a model in which investments in career advancement compete with investments in health for time – the ultimate scarce resource. The lack of a causal effect of the wage on health may suggest that forces that go in opposite directions in the human capital and compensating wage differential models offset each other.