Vicor Sees Improvement with DEK’s Nano-ProTek Stencil Coating

“After attending DEK’s webinar on Nano-ProTek, I decided to benchmark the stencil coating with a very challenging product we are producing,” says Ray Whittier, Senior Process Engineer at Vicor. “There’s always room for process improvement, and I wanted to put Nano-ProTek into practice to find out if it would yield any benefit for us. Suffice it to say, I was pleasantly surprised!”

Using the DEK Horizon 01i print platform, Vicor benchmarked numerous PCB panels, evaluating stencils coated with Nano-ProTek against stencils without the coating. With a circuit size of less than 1” wide by 1.25” long and housing nearly 200 components, the assembly is quite challenging and requires a 501-aperture count stencil. As compared to the non-coated stencils, the Nano-ProTek coated stencils increased transfer efficiency and significantly improved first pass yields.

Winner of top industry awards in both Asia and the Americas, DEK’s Nano-ProTek stencil nano coating is a two-part, wipe-on stencil coating that renders the underside of the stencil fluxophobic, keeping flux and the integrated metal solder paste particles from leaching into the stencil web. Nano-ProTek can be quickly applied to new or existing stencils, is remarkably simple to use and, as proven by Vicor, very cost-effective. “When you consider operator and line stoppage costs, the savings we are realizing with Nano-ProTek are considerable,” comments Whittier. “That’s real money and for a per stencil investment of less than $50.00, I think it’s a pretty darn good ROI!”

Brian Lau, DEK Director of Process Support Products and Commercial Management, reiterates Whittier’s comments regarding the effectiveness of Nano-ProTek: “Ray and the team at Vicor have provided further evidence of what we are seeing in manufacturing facilities all over the world,” says Lau. “Nano-ProTek is easy-to-use, extremely affordable and, most importantly, delivers measurable process improvements that translate to big cost savings. Innovation doesn’t have to be complex to be effective and we’ve proven that with Nano-ProTek.”