Product category:
Electronics Manufacturing Quality Assurance
News Release from: HumiSeal Europe | Subject: Electronics reliability equipment
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 05 May 2005
Electronics reliability equipment goes
on show
Concoat Systems will be offering advice to assist companies in selecting the right solutions to meet their needs and demonstrating its electronics reliability equipment on Stand G522 at Nepcon 2005.
Forthcoming environmental legislation, including the Reduction of Harmful Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives, defined by the European Union, will have a major impact on electronics manufacturing processes To assist companies with many of the issues they will face during this transition, Concoat Systems will be offering advice to assist companies in selecting the right solutions to meet their needs and demonstrating its electronics reliability equipment on Stand G522 at Nepcon 2005
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 14 Dec 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Concoat Systems' benchtop MUST System II Plus solderability tester, enables fast and accurate solderability testing of surface mount, through-hole devices, PCB pads and plated through-holes, plus laboratory testing of surface finishes, fluxes and other soldering materials.
The MUST System II Plus greatly improves its operational productivity by reducing the steps necessary to complete solderability testing tasks, and offers improved reproduceability of test results thanks to an enhanced alignment accuracy capability.
The system incorporates an easy-to-use Windows XP software operating system as standard, and is available as an upgrade for users of earlier systems based on the former MS DOS operating system.
Further reading
Thermal profilers set soldering temperatures
The SoldaPro range of thermal profilers can accurately and rapidly determine the oven or wavesoldering bath temperature settings required to optimise the soldering profile of any PCB assembly.
Materials and measurement in Brighton
Nepcon UK in Brighton will host the latest in electronics materials and electronics reliability measurement equipment from Concoat.
Solderability tester takes in smallest SMDs
The industry benchmark Must solderability tester has been improved to accommodate the enhanced test accuracy needs demanded by the smallest surface mount devices.
Together with heavily revised firmware, this significantly simplifies and speeds many operational tasks and procedures.
Also available with the MUST System II Plus are lead-free test kits to help electronics manufacturing companies qualify and quantify their new lead-free manufacturing processes.
The kits include a lead-free bath and globule set and a lead-free accessories kit, and together they provide the hardware, consumables and information required to test lead-free solderability to IEC60068-2-69.
For lead-free solderability tests to be valid there must be no cross contamination from lead-based solders.
In fact, just 0.01% lead contamination is sufficient to invalidate the results.
To counteract this, Concoat has developed the new test kits to provide totally separate test environments for leaded and unleaded boards.
Concoat Systems' Auto-SIR is a unique automatic tester that measures surface insulation resistance (SIR) of PCBs.
Developed by Concoat in association with the National Physical Laboratory, it provides a much faster, more sensitive and reliable test of impending problems than has previously been available, allowing accurate prediction of the reliability of finished PCBs.
Auto-SIR can measure leakage currents below 1fA and can carry out a programmed series of measurements quickly and with high precision, easily and automatically detecting circuit shorts and dendrite growth without visual inspection.
The system enables interrogation of over 2000 test patterns with frequent monitoring at intervals selectable down to a few minutes and ensures that any dendrites are preserved for failure analysis.
It provides a full picture of electrochemical reactions on the PCB and provides early trend analysis, allowing tests to be halted when conclusive results are achieved, saving time and money.
Auto-SIR is available in three versions, with capacities of 64, 128 and 256 test points.
The instrument can be used for bare board testing, process materials characterisation and monitoring and predicting quality of circuit assemblies during manufacture.
It operates on test patterns, which may either be on dedicated test coons or designed into the component circuit.
The software package accompanying the Auto-SIR instrument conforms to international standards, is user-friendly and operates with familiar "point and click" controls under Windows XP.
Concoat Systems' CM range of contamination testers (contaminometers) are used to perform extract cleanliness solvent extracted conductivity (SEC), or resistance of organic solvent extracted (ROSE) testing to measure ionic contamination levels on bare boards, components and loaded assemblies.
The CM series is primarily targeted at any manufacturer that cannot afford field reliability problems.
Although this has traditionally been the domain of high reliability, safety critical electronics firms, it increasingly includes manufacturers of almost any miniaturised electronics product.
This is because the latter increasingly exploits the latest fine pitch, fine line circuit designs and component packaging styles (such as chip-onboard, flip chip and uBGA) whose long term operational reliability is extremely susceptible to ionic contamination.
Ionic contamination can dramatically affect long term reliability in the field.
SEC testing can be used to detect such contamination before, during and after manufacture (including cleaning and final assembly).
In this way process stability can be maintained and manufacturing stages where most ionic contamination is being introduced can be identified.
This allows manufacturers to rectify ionic contamination problems before they result in an end-of-line - and ultimately field - product failure.
The Concoat Systems CM range now comprises the CM11, the brand new CM12 and the CM80 combined cleaning/contaminometer system.
All CM series testers measure ionic cleanliness in accordance with IPC, DEF-STD, ANSI-J-STD and other major international specifications.
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