Cleaning is an essential process within electronics manufacture and has been used for many years to remove potentially harmful contaminants during PCB manufacture. Such contaminants include flux, solder and adhesive residues, and other more general contaminants such as dust and debris present from other manufacturing processes.
Wash away the worry of contaminants:
- An Electrolube brand cleaning product next to a conical flask filled with liquid
- Flux Removal
- Metal Degreasing
- Flammable & Non-flammable
- Bulk & Aerosol
- Water & Solvent Based
The purpose of cleaning, specifically within the rapidly
expanding electronics industry, is to essentially improve
product lifetime by ensuring good surface resistance
and by preventing current leakage leading to PCB
failure. This developing market sees modern and
future electronics becoming smaller and smaller and
the requirement for high performance and reliability is
stronger than ever. In order to achieve good insulation
resistance and ensure adequate adhesion of conformal coatings and encapsulation resins, the cleanliness of the
electronic assemblies is essential.
There are many stages where cleaning is required;
prior to stencilling and soldering in order to remove
contaminants from the many previous production
stages, after stencilling to remove excess solder paste/adhesive and after soldering to remove corrosive
flux residues and any solder balls.
In industry today, many manufacturers are turning to ‘no clean’ processes, implying that cleaning is not
required after soldering. In the ‘no clean’ process the
solids content of the flux is lower than traditional types,
however they still contain rosin and activator.
Such residues, along with any other unwanted
elements collected due to the missing cleaning stage,
could cause issues with adhesion and possibly affect
the performance of the protecting media applied, ie.
Encapsulation Resins or Conformal Coating. It can
therefore be stated that even with advances in new
technologies, such as ‘no clean’ fluxes, cleaning
is still an essential multi-stage process within the
electronics industry.
Finally, there are also cleaning stages required for the
removal of coatings and adhesives when re-work is
necessary, for the cleaning of individual components
and for maintenance of the production line.