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

Printed Circuit Board Assembly & PCB Design Forum

SMT electronics assembly manufacturing forum.


Fluxes

Donnie DeYoung

#4605

Fluxes | 22 March, 2000

My company is currently experimenting with with a 310 vox free water based flux on solder waves using Infared heat instead of forced convection. I'm interested if anyone has tried this and what results did you have

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Steve Harshbarger

#4606

Re: Fluxes | 22 March, 2000

Donnie,

It's funny you ask this question. I just last month was at a company doing exactly what you are asking (Alpha 310 flux with infrared heating). They were successful, but they had 2 important things going for them. 1) A spray fluxer that was able to give a very thin coverage of flux. 2) The preheat was fairly long - I think it was 6 feet. This enabled them to get the board dry before hitting the solder pot (very important to eliminate solder balls).

I would also make a suggestion to consider an alternative Alpha VOC free flux. Alpha has a number of them, and from my experience at various companies, the NR310 may not be their best one, especially when it comes to top side solder.

Feel free to give me a call with any questions (914-795-2020).

Good Luck,

Steve Harshbarger Sono-Tek Corp. Harsh@Sono-Tek.com

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RDR

#4607

Re: Fluxes | 22 March, 2000

I agree with Steve, Ultra Sonic fluxing with positive displacement instead of air pressure is key (at least in my experience). You might want to try the NR330 instead. It seems to give less solder balls and fills holes very well.

Russ

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Donnie DeYoung

#4608

Re: Fluxes | 23 March, 2000

Thanks guys. We are currently using an Opti Flux fixed spray head at 10 to 20 psi. We were using the 351 flux at 60 psi before this, so as you can see we found that there's a huge difference here. We are currently running a conveyor speed at 5.0 FPM. We were at 6.0 FPM, but someone felt that was too fast and burning the flux off too much. We have the 330 in house and are dicussing trying this on another line and see what the difference is. I'll let you know more as we go along.

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Flux-Free Reflow Soldering

Non-heated dispensing system