Board cleaner banishes dust and static

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Apr 24, 2006

The new CL-SMT MK3 contact cleaning unit is used to preclean SMT boards to remove all dust, loose surface particles and static before screen printing.

The major problem of dust and static contamination in Surface Mount Technology operations is being tackled head on with the introduction of the new CL-SMT MK3 contact cleaning unit from Microclean Technologies.

The unit will preclean SMT boards to remove all dust, loose surface particles and static before screen printing.

This ensures a cleaner surface for printing, improves solder joint integrity and provides better stencil to board gasketing.

In addition, it can reduce the incidence of blocked adhesive nozzles, reduce rework, improve end of line yields and dramatically cut the frequency of underside stencil cleaning.

Top side or both sides of the PCB can be cleaned using Microclean's special elastomer rollers, lifting particles down to 1um in size off the board.

These particles are then transferred to an adhesive roll for disposal.

Finally the board goes through a static neutralisation unit reducing the static to less than 50V to prevent the clean PCB attracting further particles and eliminating static problems as it moves through the rest of the production process.

The unit has been designed to be easily integrated "inline" with existing PCB production equipment.

It is also very easy to access and change the elastomer rollers and adhesive rolls when they need replaced or cleaned.

An integrated control unit with graphical touch screen panel makes it easy for the operator to monitor and control all the functions of the unit including speed of board throughput, display of edge width and various alarm conditions.