Reflow Profilers

What are the key feature to look for in buying a profiling product for Reflow ?

Who's is the best and how much do these systems cost ?

Thanks in advance.

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| What are the key feature to look for in buying a profiling product for Reflow ? | | Who's is the best and how much do these systems cost ? | | Thanks in advance. | | Hi Mark,

I am currently the oven sector engineer for a large CM. I spend a lot of time profiling and evaluating thermal profiling tools now days. There are two very solid makers of thermal profilers. One is KicThermal and the other is ECD. Either of these will cost you betwen 5 and 6 k. The most important feature of these profilers is that they are RF. You can view RTD while actually running production. We also have customers that require profiles be written while the oven is loaded. You can do that with any data logger but not real time. I prefer the KIC system (SlimkicII). The RF features act the same but you have 9 t/c ports as opposed to 5 on the SUPERMOLE. I also prefer the software KIC has developed. I cold go on and on but this would start to sound like an advertisement. This company has also developed applications that we use for our process monitoring and Cpk's. If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact me @ 970 207 5538. They both have web sites.

ECD.com KicThermal.com

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| | What are the key feature to look for in buying a profiling product for Reflow ? | | | | Who's is the best and how much do these systems cost ? | | | | Thanks in advance. | | | | Hi Mark, | | I am currently the oven sector engineer for a large CM. | I spend a lot of time profiling and evaluating thermal profiling tools now days. There are two very solid makers of thermal profilers. One is KicThermal and the other is ECD. Either of these will cost you betwen 5 and 6 k. The most important feature of these profilers is that they are RF. You can view RTD while actually running production. We also have customers that require profiles be written while the oven is loaded. You can do that with any data logger but not real time. I prefer the KIC system (SlimkicII). The RF features act the same but you have 9 | t/c ports as opposed to 5 on the SUPERMOLE. I also prefer | the software KIC has developed.

What is the advantage to having the profile data "real time" vs downloading the data after the profiler exits the oven.

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| | | | What are the key feature to look for in buying a profiling product for Reflow ? | | | | | | Who's is the best and how much do these systems cost ? | | | | | | Thanks in advance. | | | | | | Hi Mark, | | | | I am currently the oven sector engineer for a large CM. | | I spend a lot of time profiling and evaluating thermal profiling tools now days. There are two very solid makers of thermal profilers. One is KicThermal and the other is ECD. Either of these will cost you betwen 5 and 6 k. The most important feature of these profilers is that they are RF. You can view RTD while actually running production. We also have customers that require profiles be written while the oven is loaded. You can do that with any data logger but not real time. I prefer the KIC system (SlimkicII). The RF features act the same but you have 9 | | t/c ports as opposed to 5 on the SUPERMOLE. I also prefer | | the software KIC has developed. | | | What is the advantage to having the profile data "real time" vs downloading the data after the profiler exits the oven. | |

I Guess it the fact you can see if something is going wrong as it happens,eg: a T/C falls off.

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| | | | | | What are the key feature to look for in buying a profiling product for Reflow ? | | | | | | | | Who's is the best and how much do these systems cost ? | | | | | | | | Thanks in advance. | | | | | | | | Hi Mark, | | | | | | I am currently the oven sector engineer for a large CM. | | | I spend a lot of time profiling and evaluating thermal profiling tools now days. There are two very solid makers of thermal profilers. One is KicThermal and the other is ECD. Either of these will cost you betwen 5 and 6 k. The most important feature of these profilers is that they are RF. You can view RTD while actually running production. We also have customers that require profiles be written while the oven is loaded. You can do that with any data logger but not real time. I prefer the KIC system (SlimkicII). The RF features act the same but you have 9 | | | t/c ports as opposed to 5 on the SUPERMOLE. I also prefer | | | the software KIC has developed. | | | | | | What is the advantage to having the profile data "real time" vs downloading the data after the profiler exits the oven. | | | | | | I Guess it the fact you can see if something is going wrong as it happens,eg: a T/C falls off. |

Okay, I'm letting my nerdiness show, but I think its really cool to watch the data in real time. You can cheer on those thermally dense spots with a "Spike baby, spike!"

But really now, I don't think there is much of a difference between real-time and downloaded data, excpet the downloaded is already synched up for you. I really like running profiles, (like a lot - I could be happy doing it all day) and seeing the reaction of the board to the thermal zones kind of gives me more of an inherent feel for how the components are reacting and makes those fine-tuning tweaks easier.

I've got KIC for reflow and Supermole for the wave - I definitely like the KIC software better.

Oh, and one more thing about real-time: the VP gets a huge kick out of showing it off to visitors - it makes us look high-tech.

:-)

Chrys

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| | | | What are the key feature to look for in buying a profiling product for Reflow ? | | | | | | Who's is the best and how much do these systems cost ? | | | | | | Thanks in advance. | | | | | | Hi Mark, | | | | I am currently the oven sector engineer for a large CM. | | I spend a lot of time profiling and evaluating thermal profiling tools now days. There are two very solid makers of thermal profilers. One is KicThermal and the other is ECD. Either of these will cost you betwen 5 and 6 k. The most important feature of these profilers is that they are RF. You can view RTD while actually running production. We also have customers that require profiles be written while the oven is loaded. You can do that with any data logger but not real time. I prefer the KIC system (SlimkicII). The RF features act the same but you have 9 | | t/c ports as opposed to 5 on the SUPERMOLE. I also prefer | | the software KIC has developed. | | | What is the advantage to having the profile data "real time" vs downloading the data after the profiler exits the oven. | | Time savings. Six of our lines run high mix low volume. We may do fifteen profiles or profile verifications in a 10 hour shift. I utilize the furnaces host computers to run the Winkic software. I have also networked all these systems and created all the board files and droped them on a network directory. It take an average of 10 minutes to run a profile. We have also installed satellites on all of our furnaces. This is something I believe is unique to Kic. This allows us to use the prediction featue in the software. It takes a lot of fun out of profiling but there is never a shortage of fun around here. I also run what they call Virtual profiling. This is really neat. The most common question I have to answer to customers ...."How do we know that our profile is still accurate?" We don't. Any auditor worth his salt will argure that you can do nothing about the degredation of a furnace. Even properly maintained. The satellite places 30 thermocouples at board level. When you run a profile it draws a correlation betwee the product thermocouples and what the thermocouples next to the product see. It can't tell you everything, but it will warn you if a temp in the zone is going to affect the product in an adverse way according to parameters you set. It is a pretty solid process monitor. You only other option is to run profiles on schedule. Unfortunately, we have to do this for some customers but profile time is minimal.

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