Product category:
Electronics Manufacturing Materials and Consumables
News Release from: HumiSeal Europe | Subject: HumiSeal 1H20
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 October 2003
Water-based conformal coating applied by
aerosol
A novel "greener" conformal coating aerosol technology allows a single can of water-based, environment-friendly material to coat three times as many assemblies.
Concoat is claiming a radical breakthrough in conformal coating aerosol technology that will make this type of application method dramatically more environment-friendly, safe, cost effective and convenient Until now, applying conformal coating by aerosol involved manually spraying a toxic and hazardous solvent-based material onto a PCB assembly
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 14 Dec 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Odour free, it eliminates many health and safety concerns in the workplace.
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"Another big traditional limitation of using aerosols to apply conformal coatings was that the maximum amount of solids content that could be packed into a single aerosol can was typically less than 10%", explains Concoat Managing Director, Graham Naisbitt.
"The bulk of the product - ie the other 90% - was solvent and propellant".
The problem with this is that the recommended thickness of conformal coating on an assembly - as quoted by the MIL and now IPC specifications - is 50 +/-25um on a flat surface.
This means that a typical aerosol could only be expected to coat at most 0.4m2 in order to build up the required film thickness correctly: ie by a series of continual light passes.
Moreover, if the assembly had any particularly tall or awkwardly shaped components the film fillet around the edges could easily and quite acceptably rise to four times that of a flat surface and even fewer assemblies could be coated from a single can.
This made using an aerosol to apply conformal coatings a very expensive application method.
"Thanks to a major R and D breakthrough at Concoat, however, we have found a way to dramatically increase the maximum solids content that can be carried by a single conformal coating aerosol can be more than three times", continues Naisbitt.
"This was primarily achieved by using leading-edge BoV 'bag-on-valve' aerosol technology that simply replaces the flammable propellant with compressed air".
"As a result an average aerosol can now offer tremendous application coverage and will coat 1.2m2 which completely changes the entire cost proposition of using aerosols".
The Concoat 1H20 aerosol has the appearance of milk, so that the operator can see precisely where the coating is being applied.
Then, as the coating dries, it becomes completely clear.
This provides the operator with an easy and instant view of the coverage and uniformity achieved.
"As such we have been able to develop a conformal coating aerosol product that by and large counters all of the original drawbacks of using aerosols to apply conformal coatings", summarises Naisbitt.
"Customers can now buy a single can that will last for as long as three traditional solvent based cans, that will dramatically reduce their cost per unit material outlay".
This development will be welcomed by field service and repair engineers, small volume R and D and prototype manufacturers; plus anyone else that has a regular requirement to apply conformal coatings by aerosol.
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