In a previous life doing contract manufacturing, we had a switch that was rated by it's manufacturer as being washable... Investigation showed that not to be quite true. But of course it was established with the customer (and designer) as a good part, so we had to make it work. We ended up putting finger cots on the switches before putting them through the cleaner. The switch had an o-ring to seal it, but under water pressure it wasn't quite working. Not the best fix, but the obvious alternative was to install it last, using "no-clean" flux. Yech! What kind of defects? The switch would short out - we'd find it during test. Because it was sealed anything that got in there tended to stay in there for a while. regards, - Graham -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Bloomquist Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 1:34 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Defects related to water wash Hi Carl, Sorry to have sidetracked your original email subject. If you have components that are sensitive to moisture entrapment then they must be sealed during water wash. If you get water into say a switch then a number of bad things can begin to happen. Some that come to mind are corrosion to internal metal parts, dendrites growing if contaminants got into the switch along with the water, a sticky switch again if more than just plain water got in there and the worst thing is that most of the defects will be latent only causing a problem when your customer needs your product at a most important moment! I'm sure others will chime in with more reasons but the manufacturers of components warn against washing particular parts for a reason, don't do it unless you seal them really good! KennyB -----Original Message----- From: Ray, Carl (GE EntSol, Intelligent Platforms) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 7:59 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Defects related to water wash My initial question was related to functional damage to components due to the exposure to the washing processes. Not any types of mechanical damage. Example - BIT Switches have tape to protect the component from the wash process. If the tape was removed or if a part was not designed to withstand a washing process what types of related defect could be expected, short and long term? --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------