• Can lead-free and lead-containing PCBs be cleaned in a single process?
  Study recently conducted by Zestron for better understanding the risks of cleaning lead-free and lead-containing assemblies together in a single process. By conducting cleaning trials and laboratory analysis as well as analyzing customer bath samples, the risk of a cross contamination of the lead-free assemblies with lead was examined. The study showed that using modern cleaning technologies, the limits for lead-content on lead-free assemblies set forth by RoHS and WEEE are not exceeded.
  Published: Global SMT & Packaging 11/2008

• How to select an optimum cleaning process
  When searching for the optimal cleaning process, users must ask themselves numerous questions, as there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, elements such as the cleaning medium and the cleaning machine must be adapted to the specific requirements. The required surface cleanliness is, for example, much higher for assembly cleaning than for stencil cleaning, which results in more stringent requirements on the cleaning chemicals and machine. As the market offers a wide range of different cleaning systems, an independent expert with a representative selection of cleaning machines, cleaning media and analytical methods at their disposal can carry out cleaning trials for the customer to facilitate the user in making the right investment decision.
  Published: OnBoard 10/2008

• Cleaning to Optimize Your Wire Bonding Process
  The quality of wire bonding processes is oftentimes affected by contaminated surfaces. With integrating suitable qualification measures and an efficient cleaning process, reliable and reproducible results can be ensured.
  Published: EPP 07/2007

• Conformal Coating Issues – When Reliability Goes Astray
  Coatings on electronic assemblies must adhere perfectly to guarantee optimally working assemblies even under extreme conditions. For this reason, exceptionally high demands are placed on the cleanliness of the assembly surface. New, economical and fast analytical procedures to test assemblies for cleanliness are presented in this article.
  Published: Global SMT &Packaging 03/2007

• New cleaning concepts help!
  Economical Cleaning of Misprints
  By introducing an optimized cleaning process, Marquardt was able to realize the cleaning of their stencils and misprinted PCBs in a single process. Solder pastes, SMT adhesives as well as flux residues can now be removed in a single cleaning process. Due to cleaning the double-sided, populated PCBs, of which some have already been soldered on one side, they can be reintroduced into the production process. The company has thereby reduced rejects to a minimum and lowered production costs.
  Published: EPP Europe 09-10/2008

• Stencil and misprint cleaning in one process
  Siemens Electronic Design and Manufacturing Services (SEDM) is manufacturing customer-specific board assemblies and electronics systems. The company implemented a new SMT line, and in the course of this capital investment the team also took into consideration the need to incorporate a cleaning process.
  Published: EPP 11/2005

Improved printing by underside wipe cleaning
This Case Study was done by Sanmina-SCI and illustrates how the quality of the printing process was improved by installing a new stencil underside cleaning process.
Published: Global SMT & Packaging 05/2006

Fast And Cost-Effective Coating Tests
Coating tests are required during development to avoid the expensive redesign of assemblies at a later point in time. Until now test
methods have been time consuming and expensive. We take a look at a fast and cost effective test method, which puts conformal coatings to the ultimate test.
Published: Onboard 05/2005

• How clean do assemblies have to be?
  Many users are confronted with this question when assessing the cleanliness of their electronic assemblies.There is a wide range of standards, which deal with this issue and specify methods for analyzing the surface cleanliness by means of different processes.
  Published: EPP Europe 10/2007