Title
Interview
Interview—
Mike Konrad, Aqueous Technologies
Mike Konrad is probably one of the best-known faces in the cleaning indus- try. As president and CEO of Aqueous Technologies, he has steered the com- pany through years of double-digit growth and pioneered a range of batch washers that have become the “industry standard” in many facilities around the world. Trevor Galbraith spoke to Mike about the next milestones for Aqueous Tech.
Cleaning is going through a remarkable resurgence. What principal factors are driving that growth?
Its important to realize that cleaning did not go away aſter the Montreal Protocol in 1989 that banned the use of all CFCs. Prior to that, cleaning was mainstream, and most products were cleaned. Aſter 1989, cleaning remained strong in military and other high reliability sectors, but the rest of the industry turned to “no-clean.” Small amounts of flux and residues leſt on the board were deemed to be relatively safe. However, three main drivers changed
all that. Te first is miniaturization: cathodes and anodes are right next to each other. Second, lead-free increased the melting point of solder by 50-60˚C, which baked the flux residues onto the board and made them harder to clean. Te third driver is the increased requirement for greater reliability.
Many customers affectionately refer to batch cleaners as dishwashers. You call them “defluxing machines.” What is the difference?
We would love everyone to call them defluxing machines, because unless you put dishes in them, they aren’t dishwashers. Tere are only so many ways you can design a box to clean circuit boards, but that is where the resemblance ends. Tere are some companies that buy dishwashers to clean boards, but the pumps that we use would break dishes. Our systems have completely different nozzle designs that produce smaller water particles and spray patterns. Tey are also equipped with sophisticated SPC data and quality control tools in a variety of languages, unlike dishwashers.
With the rising volumes in cleaning, is there a rising requirement cleaning machines?
for inline 62 – Global SMT & Packaging – February 2011
Te good thing about inline cleaners is that they were designed for cleaning circuit boards from the start and are very efficient at doing this in volume applications. Te problem with inline cleaners is that they
are hugely inefficient
the water consumption, volumes,
to operate: the drain
the energy consumption and
the operator requirements are excessive. In today’s environmentally aware world, manufacturers are more cautious about the quantity and quality of waste they pump out into the drains or up the stack into the air and have turned to batch processes to manage this more efficiently. Cleaning, historically, was always a
batch process. Inline cleaners only were introduced aſter the Montreal Protocol in 1989. However, with today’s high mix, high reliability product mixes in Europe and the United States, the volumes lend themselves environmentally and economically to a batch process.
www.globalsmt.net
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