technology matching your needs. One last point is these aqueous products do require some attention to keep the concentration of the cleaning material in the correct range, commonly 10-20% in water. It is easy to do it just requires a little attention. The industry leaders have a broad product line to
address the challenges presented by the hundreds of different soldering materials sold around the world. These leaders have studied those hundreds of soldering materials, so they know which of their products will give you the best solution. They have the data! Of course, the most important data in that analysis is what your soldering materials are and some information about your substrates, so come ready to share that information and you will speed up the process. Next comes the
validation testing. Once again, you may think that is easy to say but how does one do it when you have not purchased your cleaning system or your current equipment has no idle time to spare for testing. Once again, here is where the leading suppliers can help. They have applications laboratories around the world to do this testing with you, or if need be for you. Their fully staffed laboratories not only have the various equipment types you will want to consider, but the better labs have all the verification test equipment from very high power digital microscopes and routine ionic residue test equipment up to ion chromatography and FTIR. All on site with experienced scientists to run the evaluations and share their expertise with you. Let’s review! You have evaluated what you need to clean
and what you need to remove. You have evaluated a range of cleaning materials (and suppliers) for a good match with your needs. You now have a cleaning material, or two down selected and you also know the type of equipment you need: spray in air, ultrasonic, spray under immersion. Next we need to evaluate your process requirements.
What is the volume of the substrates you are evaluating? Are they exotic, high value parts that you make a few or a few dozen per week, or is this a major production item being produced by the thousands? Or is this a prototype
March 15th 2012
and the contract for full scale production is far from certain? Let’s discuss them one by one starting with the smallest. Prototypes in many ways are the most challenging
to consider. The reason is they are often a moving target. The design is not quite frozen, the various components and material sets are still a bit uncertain; often the end customer is still finalizing the specifications, and perhaps still being a bit hazy on the expected volumes ~ though of course they will be big! Prototype evaluations are where the leading materials suppliers and their fully-equipped applications laboratories can be of major help. Remember these leaders
benefit from the experience of their thousands of customers. They may not have seen it all, but they have seen many things. The laboratory staffs are quite skilled at evaluating new, leading edge designs with regard to how they might be cleaned. They are also able to run testing using a
variety of methods across the production rate spectrum to give you all the data you will need as the program begins to lock down and go into production. The key element here is communication. The only way those experts can help is if you share the right information, even if some of it is still developing. Not surprisingly, non-disclosure agreements are quite routine during evaluations especially with prototype projects. Let’s assume your project is beyond prototype and
ready to go into production. Let’s also assume it is a specialty, high margin project that has modest volumes perhaps a few dozen assemblies per day. In this case we should be considering batch cleaning equipment. There are a number of good options to choose from. The most common batch systems used today are the dishwasher style cabinet cleaning systems. They have proven to be an effective choice for many years with hundreds if not thousands of them in use throughout the world from a range of suppliers. The leading suppliers are easy to pick out. They
have been in the business for many years, and have a strong reputation for quality products and service. Not
www.electronicscomponentsworld.com /
www.electronicsproductionworld.com EIU 21
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