Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design SMT Electronics Assembly Manufacturing Forum

Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design Forum

SMT electronics assembly manufacturing forum.


Wave "Rider" Tools

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John S.

#47814

Wave "Rider" Tools | 19 February, 2007

We're looking into a new profiler and potentially one of these wave rider tools. I found some old threads, but nothing very recent. We tried the Malcolm tool a long time ago, but we weren't very happy with it. I'm sure I can get a demo unit and conduct a GR&R on the various parameters, but how do they fair over time? Maintenance issues? Or am I better off sticking with my glass plate? Datapaq has proposed a kit that allows you to make your own carrier. Anyone tried that out yet? Thanks John S.

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#47817

Wave | 19 February, 2007

WaveRiders do work well. But they just measure, do they do not adjust anything. It's up to you or your staff to interpret and adjust your machine accordingly. It�s one of those tools that is affective, but only to the extent of you�re willing to use it too. A daily check is what I used to do in a past life.

Making your own probably wouldn�t be that hard to engineer. Having someone make a custom carrier for your data acquisitioner would probably be the hard part. If you have a data acquisitioner, then having your own carrier or pallet made would be cheaper.

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#47818

Wave | 19 February, 2007

I've used ECD's WaveRIDER and TIC's Wave Optimizer, and some people have sworn by Malcom's wave reader as well (if you look at all the past threads). We HAD an optimizer here in our shop, but somebody bwoke it. :-(

As for evaluating these, see Chunk's comments. She pretty much hits the nail on the head.

Currently, I have KIC 2000 which I use for reflow, but it's also got built-in wave reading capabilities, and I just finished designing my own custom pallet. KIC Thermal does offer their own version, a Wave Surfer, but I opted to design and then have a pallet made for a fraction of the price.

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#47879

Wave | 21 February, 2007

sure sounds like alot of over kill. You can get all the info you need by running your machine. Keep the dross cleamed outof it and replace the flux stone every so often and you shouldn't have any problems. Them fancy machines are no match for real product besides them machines use really thinck pallet that's way thicker than a baord so you can easily flood your real product. Our old engineer usta run one all the time and would totally goof up our waves. Lucky for him I worked 2nd shift and was able to correct his 8 hours of fiddlin' around. turns out he broke the dang thing on purpose anyway!?!?! Now that tells ya something.

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