Oct 25, 2017 ZESTRON, the globally leading provider of high precision cleaning products, services and training solutions in the electronics manufacturing and semiconductor industries, is pleased to announce it will host the November SMTA Capital Chapter Meeting. Ravi Parthasarathy, M.S.Ch.E., Senior Application Engineer, ZESTRON Americas, will present “Cleaning Before Conformal Coating” and “pH Neutral Cleaning Agents – Market Expectation & Field Performance.”
Cleaning Before Conformal Coating - Do you conformally coat your electronic assemblies? If so, cleaning prior to conformal coating is a must to ensure the long-term reliability of your products. This presentation provides an overview of potential failure mechanisms resulting from coating over residues.
pH Neutral Cleaning Agents – Market Expectation & Field Performance - With regard to precision cleaning applications within electronics manufacturing, pH neutral product development was a major breakthrough in recent years. The impetus for this development resulted from changes with regard to solder paste formulations and resulting assembly processes.
The greater use of lead-free solder paste and the required higher reflow profiles have resulted in even more difficult to remove burnt-in flux residues. Coupled with increases in component density, larger component packages, higher lead counts, finer lead spacing, and lower standoff distances, effective cleaning is greatly challenged. Water based cleaning agents can effectively remove these flux residues, however, the process often requires an increase in wash temperature, exposure time, chemical concentration, and mechanical energy. Although an efficient and effective cleaning process can be developed, oftentimes, the required operating parameters present a new set of challenges with regard to material compatibility.
Since their introduction, the newly developed pH neutral formulations have proven to be capable not only of removing these difficult post reflow residues from complex board geometries, but do so without affecting material compatibility of sensitive components. Additionally, they’re effective at low concentration levels. This study reviews the performance of pH neutral cleaning agents as compared to alkaline cleaning agent alternatives and includes field data demonstrating their effectiveness with regard to material compatibility and cleaning performance.
The SMTA Capital Chapter’s third meeting will be held on November 7th, from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM at ZESTRON Americas, 11285 Assett Loop, Manassas, VA, 20109. To register, please visit smta.org.
Headquartered in Manassas, Virginia, and operating in more than 35 countries, ZESTRON is the globally leading provider of high precision cleaning products, services and training solutions for the electronics and semiconductor manufacturing industries. With seven worldwide technical centers and the largest team of engineers focused on high precision cleaning, ZESTRON’s commitment to ensuring that its customers surpass even the most stringent cleaning requirements is without equal. For additional information and to tour one of our unparalleled technical centers, please visit www.zestron.com.
