Inra-red provider celebrates 21 years of operation

PDR celebrates 21 years of supplying leading-edge focused infra-red (IR) rework systems to the global electronics industry.

This year, British company PDR celebrates 21 years of supplying leading-edge focused infra-red (IR) rework systems to the global electronics industry.

This family owned company is one of just a handful of SMT/BGA rework systems specialists, with 3,500 installations worldwide, an enviable reputation among leading EMS providers and OEMs, and the safest, easiest and most versatile rework technology in the industry.

It all started in 1985, when PDR's Managing Director Roger Gibbs saw an IR lamp being used to reflow components.

The method was crude, the lamp was so bright that welding glasses were necessary, and the heat burned the components, but Gibbs saw the potential immediately: "At the time, hot gas was the only choice, so this was a massive departure" he says.

"My suggestion that it be developed fell on deaf ears, so we decided to develop it ourselves".

For the fledgling PDR, formed by Gibbs, his brother Philip and David Lowrie, the first challenge was to correct the uneven heat produced by the IR lamp.

This was achieved using a lens unit designed together with a leading lens manufacturer.

But the real breakthrough came some months later, as Gibbs explains: "We still weren't desoldering properly, so I put a contact heater on the back of the PCB to preheat it, and suddenly, rework was easy".

In 1986, PDR showed a prototype machine at Internepcon in Birmingham, where it impressed Racall Electronics' Steve Pinnoch so much that he bought PDR's first commercially available system, the IR-1500B.

With 27 more systems sold in that first year, PDR was on its way.

That was 21 years ago.

Since then the electronics industry has gone through immense changes: grid array components, extreme miniaturisation and lead-free legislation have transformed electronics products beyond recognition, while fierce global competition has created time and cost pressures that were unheard of in 1986.

Today, all rework processes, be they IR or hot gas, preheat the board, but in 1986, hot gas systems simply heated from above in a one-stage reflow process.

In 1994 PDR brought out its new Focused IR rework system with split beam prism BGA alignment, at a time when BGAs were first being researched for their use in mobile telephones.

Two years later it updated its closed-loop thermal control software and introduced rework's first non-contact heat sensor, enabling operators to know exactly when hidden solderballs reach reflow.

A revolution in its own right, the heat sensor really came into its own in 2005 with the introduction of PDR's powerful yet easy-to-use auto profile software with real-time closed-loop control.

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