========================================================================= Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 14:37:00 EDT From: "Jim Marsico"@mr.ail.com Subject: survey results MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Posting-date: Tue, 2 Sep 1997 00:00:00 EDT A1-type: DOCUMENT 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]