Jim,

>A fellow process engineer has asked me if I knew of any way to find
>companies using saponifers to
>clean rosin flux off CCA's.  He is particularly interested in the use of
>Alpha 2110  (he already called Alpha).  He would like  process
>information from .  I immediately thought of TechNet.  If anyone can
>help, please call or email:

We use Alpha 2110 saponifier in our in-line aqueous clean system ( an
Electrovert H-500 system) to clean cards
processed with an RMA solder paste. Our process is no-clean as such, but
some customers who are conformally coating cards didn't want to risk
problems of undesired interaction between the flux residue and the
conformal coating.

In our setup we have a prewash rinse and two wash sections. The first wash
tank contains the saponifier, maintained to a concentration of 5% and a
wash temperature of 160F. The second runs DI water. We maintain control of
the saponifier by regular titration and makeup. We dump the saponifier
about once every few months. Before dumping we neutralise the saponifier
with HCL (we use brickies HCL, because it's cheaper).  We tend to dump when
we notice the saponifier effectiveness starting to wane.

In some locations BOD and COD (Biological Oxygen Demand & Chemical Oxygen
Demand) are more tightly regulated by  waste water authorities than others,
so you may need to work with your local authority on this, as to whether
you need to treat the waste stream for this before releasing. We didn't
find a problem with this. When the waste from the wash was mixed with
other waste water the BOD/COD levels were reduced below acceptable limits.

One problem we had when we introduced saponifier was that the wash tank
exhibited excessive foaming. We eventually determined that this was due to
the fact that we were using DI water, it was too clean. Other companies
using city water, which was harder, had no problem. To counter this we add
a defoaming agent to the saponification section.

Regards Evan

Evan Jones
Manufacturing Engineer
Bluegum Technology Pty Ltd
PO Box 609, Wangaratta, Australia, 3676
Ph: 61 3 5720 2539     Fax: 61 3 5720 2412
Internet:  [log in to unmask]

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