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Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker

Donnie D.

#5281

Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker | 20 February, 2001

I was wondering if there's anyone who can give me some feedback on a product called the Data Pac Reflow Tracker. My company was paid a visit by one of their vendors, but I would like feedback from someone who has used this product. What are its benefits, and what are its downfalls. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

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#5292

Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker | 20 February, 2001

You should evaluate products from Datapaq, Electronic Controls Design, and Kic Thermal Profiling. Each sells very good reflow profiling equipment.

Beyond the straight forward issues surrounding the question of "Does this thing produce a good profile?", consider:

* Need for a hot pad [that is rarely included in the supplier packing].

* Batteries, like how are you going to make sure your rechareables are charged at the "correct" time?

* How the supplier gets your information from the profiler to the computer when used on multiple machines.

* How can this box be used to run profiles on other machines, like your wave solder machine.

* How does the profiler fit into your calibration program.

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Donnie

#5299

Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker | 21 February, 2001

Thanks for the input. We currently have both the Waverider and Kic products in house. We use the WaveRider on all our waves, and the Kic for the ovens. We want to find a product for our ovens that's a little more up to date than the Kic. I'm looking at ECD's Ovenrider also. My biggest concerns are the software packages, cost, relyability, and DEPENDABILITY. So if you or anyone has some data, I'll take it.

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Matt Poppert

#5334

Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker | 22 February, 2001

I am a regional sales manager for datapaq. If you e-mail me or call me I would be happy to give you the names of a number of people who use the datapaq and are very happy with it. 847-781-5372

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Greg Jones

#5346

Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker | 23 February, 2001

Donnie: I was surprised to see your comment "a little more up to date than KIC." Please contact me for information about our new product lines. I can gaurantee you they're more then "up to date." Greg Jones DrJ@kicmail.com

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JohnW

#5357

Info on the Data Paq Reflow Tracker | 26 February, 2001

Folk's,

I've been running with the datapaq system for about 5 years now. I have been using it on both reflow and on wave, the only issue I've ever found is that you cannot predict settings for wave, but then you can't do that on Kic and I don't think you can do it on ECD but I'm willing to eat my word's on that point. In term's of the software, th current version is 16 bit, i.e. it's built on top of the window's 3.1 platform so it's got some funny way's of handling long program names and so forth but it's very good. The prediction element of the unit is very accurate, it's at least as good as Kic but without haing to add thermocouple chain's to your oven. The unit is easy to use and robust, the information trasnfer we use is via direct datacable after the reflow run although you can have real time telemetry, to be honest I've never yet understood why you need RF on a tracker...there isn't an oven that is going to respond quick enough to make a difference. Datapaq supply you with a heat sheld for the unit, uing this I have never had a unit going over temp little less getting about 60 deg. In term's of batteries the softwares obviously showing you how much charge you have in the unit and how long you have logging time left, this is changeable depending on the sampling rate that your setting. I've ran rial's with Kic, ECD, Multicore unit's and I have to say I'm really happy with datapaq. Now al that said and done they have a new version of software coming along that will blow everyone away, I've seen the current demo version and there are some serious good point's to it, from importing CAD data to get a thermal map of the card via coper loading to thermo analyis of the PCB and recomandations of where to put you probes. Upshot...if it were my money, I'd go with datapaq, they look to have got the oven characterisation working well without the use of chain's, they now have the tie in with most machine manufactures to feedback to the controller and update your temp's automatically for you and it'll run on anymachien you need it to.

John

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