Teknek's board cleaner draws focus at Productronica
The latest addition to Teknek’s family of SMT Clean Machines – the BC 460 – will take centre stage at this year’s Productronica. According to the SMTA some 74% of all defects in the SMT manufacturing process are related to solder paste printing problems. Blocked stencils can be caused by a number of things including laser-marking ablation dust, solder resist chips, routing dust, hair and clothing fibres from operators.
Teknek know the solution is to ensure that the bare boards are thoroughly cleaned before printing using the latest contact cleaning technology. By including this simple process step, manufacturers can increase yields by 3 to 6 per cent.
The BC 460 is a single sided board cleaner which integrates seamlessly into the production line. The unit also has an integral anti-static system to reduce the risk of recontamination and features an easy-to-use operator interface. The use of independent motors to drive each roller has reduced the number of moving parts, which will increase long-term reliability.
Ruaridh Nicolson, Teknek’s sales and marketing manager, comments: “The SMT industry has invested substantial amounts of money in sophisticated equipment such as 3D SPI machines. However, this only highlights that you have a problem such as too little solder paste on a pad and you have to scrap the board – it does not offer a solution! In sectors where Zero tolerance is the norm, this becomes an expensive scrap bill. Our customers import fine pitch boards, unpack them, laser mark them and then pass them through the Teknek board cleaner. The SPI equipment shows the customer that they are getting closer to achieving their goal of zero defects as well as dramatically reducing the amount of rework required."