hi.

Has anyone experienced or heard of using wax as a type of cheap conformal
coating. Our company is looking at conformal coatings at the moment but
equipment costs are high, our product has low margins and our manufacturing
process would have to change from a cell / line (one piece flow) set up to a
batch setup.
We were thinking that we may just have to coat one side of the boards only
and so wax could be applied using wave soldering type equipment.
Our main problem with using regular conformal coatings is that our final
functional tests are carried out via test pads while the PCBs are in their
plastic enclosures. Wax would allow us to continue doing this as the test
pins could pierce through the wax to contact the test pads and afterwards
these pin holes would be minimal as wax has a small degree of reflow /
creep. Otherwise we would have to selectivily spray the conformal coatings,
missing the test pads but leaving them more vunerable to damage / corrosion
while is service.
Has anyone any experience of wax coating PCBs.

Best regards

David Hannick

Ei Electronics
Shannon
Ireland.

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