Two weeks ago I posted a quetionare regarding the hand cleaning of soldered
assemblies.  I received 9 responses, the following is the actual breakdown of
these responses:

1) Military or Commercial?

        MILITARY        5
        COMMERCIAL      0
        BOTH            4

2) Clean or no clean?

        CLEAN           9
        NO-CLEAN        0

3) What flux type are you using?

        RMA             8
        OTHER           1 (HF-1189)

4) Hand or machine cleaning?
5) What chemical or solvent are you using?
6) Are you happy with your present cleaning process?
7) Any additional comments?

        A) Interim hand cleaning with IPA  or acetone, final degreasing
           with Asahikleen AK225AES.  Satisfied, high material cost.

        B) Interim hand cleaning with alcohol or agitated Axarel 2200,
           final batch cleaning with Axarel 32 followed by a DI rinse.
           Axarel 2200 needs to be forced air dried (air hose); Batch
           system using Axarel 32 and DI also has a drying process which
           is lengthy.

        C) Hand cleaning with IPA... Not satisfied!  Hand cleaning with
           alcohol only seems to smear the RMA around.

        D) Hand cleaning with IPA... Not satisfied!  Takes too much
           scrubbing.

        E) Hand cleaning with IPA... No comment

        F) Hand cleaning with IPA... Not satisfied!  Not aggressive
           enough, but Manufacturing Engineering doesn't agree. (This
           must be one of those Q.A. guys!!)

        G) Hand cleaning with IPA, vapor degreasing with Prelete.
           Prelete works great, costs a fortune.  Not very
           environmentally friendly with either chemical, odor with both
           were problems, alcohol is flammable.

        H) Hand cleaning with MicroCare ProClean.  It's OK.  Water wash
           with a saponifier prior to conformal coating.

        I) Machine clean with DI water and alcohol (HF-1189 flux).
            Switched to water soluble flux about a year ago.

Well, it seems that there is an industry-wide void (based on a sample of 9) in
the cleaning process, especially for hand cleaning sub-assemblies which cannot
be processed as a board assembly.  Any comments?

Jim Marsico
(516) 595-5879
[log in to unmask]

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