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The necessity of N2 enviroment on lead free wave

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#77896

The necessity of N2 enviroment on lead free wave | 22 June, 2017

We are changing /adding a lead free wave. This will either be a conversion of a leaded wave or a new purchase. Nitrogen seems to be a necessity in selective soldering lead free, should I presume the same for a wave process? I am interested in first hand experience of waving lead free. Thanks.

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Tim

#77951

The necessity of N2 enviroment on lead free wave | 24 June, 2017

We bought a new lead free wave from Electrovert about a year ago and opted to not have the nitrogen options installed on this machine. We could not justify the cost of the nitrogen used versus the benefits that we would see.

One downfall is that you will create more dross without nitrogen. We typically remove the dross before the wave is used at the beginning of a 8 hour shift. You may also cut down on the number of bridges on a board but in my experience if you use decent flux and profile the board properly you can get the numbers of bridges to zero (with the exception of certain components with extremely close leads and even those it's typically only two to four leads bridged on each part)

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