The Estonian champion in hand soldering electronics took home the title for the third year in a row

Annual Estonian Open Hand Soldering Championships have been taken place at the Industrial and Technology Fair Instrutec. The winner was for the third year in a row, Timmo Antso, who uses his skills on a daily basis at Scanfil’s Pärnu factory. The second place belonged also to Scanfil employee – Ivo Ellik. With the victorious duo, the team victory and the cup of the competition thus went to the same factory. Karin Andressoo from Enics Eesti won the third place.
The competition was initiated be Estonian Electronics Industries Association and international electronics organization IPC. According to Arno Kolk, Managing Director of the Estonian Electronics Industry Association, the level of the hand soldering competition was extremely strong. 26 competitors had to solve a difficult task. The participants had a very diverse background, being specialists from electronics factories, students of Pärnu County Vocational Education Center and doctoral researchers from the Taltech Institute of Electronics. As a competition task, the participants had to assemble an electronic board from electronic components using surface mounting and through hole technologies. The hand-soldering task, which requires precision and dexterity, was supervised by judges from Tallinn Polytechnic with IPC master trainer certificates, who assessed the performance and quality of the finished circuit board based on international IPC standards.
Although the soldering competition at Instrutec is a preliminary round of the IPC World Championships, and the winner would have made it to the World Championships, the World Cup will unfortunately be canceled this year due to corona restrictions.
Arranging hand soldering competitions is part of educational and skills promotion activities of Estonian Electronics Industries Association with the aim of maintaining and raising the competitiveness of the electronics industry.