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Simply Modern Aqueous Cleaning
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The reason aqueous cleaning has been the technology of choice for the past 10 to 12 years is quite simple: it works. However, that is where the simplicity ends. One complication is that there are two different kinds of aqueous cleaning commonly used in the global market today. They go by the same name but, in fact, mean two absolutely different things.
The first aqueous cleaning is long on aqueous, and though widely practiced sometimes comes short on cleaning. This is the use of straight deionized (DI) water to clean so-called water-soluble or OA-type fluxes. This is a common practice, but one that increasingly is hitting some roadblocks as devices, packages, and assemblies continue the progression toward smaller sizes. Of course, the effective OA flux residues must be 100% removed or they can quickly become the root cause for filed returns — an expensive proposition.
This approach continues to be effective for many consumer market products where designs allow water to remove these residues quite well. Increasingly, packaging houses are finding that water alone is not enough to remove the residues from their products. Many are now evaluating the potential benefits of that other aqueous cleaning technology, often with positive results. Likewise, leading-edge assembly houses are experiencing yield issues with the water-only process and beginning their own evaluations. So, this first aqueous cleaning has broad acceptance, but may be encountering a wall limiting its future usefulness in certain areas.
Aqueous cleaning number two is different, defined as cleaning with water-dilutable agents that are long on cleaning and very long on water as well. These materials have been on an aggressive innovation curve for much of the past dozen years. Why? The leading lead-free solder technology houses have introduced dozens of new materials over the past six or seven years, with many delivering important value and gaining wide acceptance. Is it any wonder that legacy cleaning technologies, water among them, may be challenged by these modern, often polymer-based materials? No more than it is surprising that the latest MS Office does not work well with Windows 3.0.
Scientists in the aqueous cleaner field are busy. In this millennium, customers are using modern solder materials, components, packages, and designs, often encountering difficult cleaning challenges. This is where the benefits of modern aqueous technology take advantage of the plethora of new materials and test equipment available to develop groundbreaking new technology. Hence the string of innovations introduced from leading scientists to address today’s cleaning challenges. The challenge, however, lies beyond providing great cleaning performance.
Electronics assembly has always been a cost-sensitive industry, one that constantly seeks to reduce cost whether to comply with Moore’s Law or the demands of the marketplace. As cleaning evolved over the past 20 years from CFCs to semiaqueous, to just water to not much cleaned at all, to today — where cleaning can and does improve reliability, yields, and profits, the cost equation is never far below the surface.
As one considers these two aqueous cleaning approaches, it would seem simple math to conclude that water costs far less than any cleaning agent. However, upon further analysis, leading-edge companies are discovering that moving to true aqueous cleaning with modern materials can deliver improved yields. The cost of cleaning agents are pennies compared to the dollars gained by even slight improvements in production yield. So higher yield reduced overall costs, but there are numerous ways to reduce process costs. Lower concentrations and temperatures are often an option today, but the most attractive goal is higher throughput. Higher speeds avoid the capital and floor space expense of additional production equipment, truly doing more with less.
Once again, these modern materials offer high performance at reduced operating costs: lower temperatures, lower concentrations, faster processing times — not unlike today’s laptops outperforming those of only a few years ago. These innovative materials are enabling adopters to improve their competitive position in the market. They can compete more effectively for contracts requiring cleaning, an increasing component of the market in both North America and Western Europe.
Modern aqueous cleaning technology provides a significant benefit, particularly for high-reliability, specification-driven operations: avoiding obsolescence risk. The leading aqueous cleaning companies must be experts in high-mix/low-volume manufacturing. Suppliers must be skilled at keeping many generations of technology economically in production for extended periods — sometimes many years. This surety of supply for spec’d-in materials is an under-recognized but exceptional benefit of modern aqueous cleaning technologies.
Simply put, modern aqueous technologies answer the one question every manufacturing engineer asks as they consider a process alternatives. Is it better, cheaper, and faster? Aqueous scientists answer that question with an unequivocal “Yes.&rdqou;
Tom Forsythe, VP, Kyzen Corporation, is a member of the SMTA Board of Directors, and may be contacted at (615) 831-0888; tom_forsythe@kyzen.com.