Product category:
Coatings and coating systems
News Release from: HumiSeal Europe | Subject: UV curable conformal coatings
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 26 April 2006
UV curable conformal coatings unlikely
to 'crack'
Significant advancements in the field of UV curable conformal coating materials have produced an extremely flexible, physically, making the product less likely to 'crack' under thermal cycling.
Concoat has made significant advancements in the field of UV curable conformal coating materials with HumiSeal UV40 Easy to process, it is extremely flexible, physically, making it less likely to 'crack' under thermal cycling
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 15 Dec 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
UV curable conformal coating does not crack
A UV curable conformal coating material is easy to process and will not 'crack' under thermal cycling, and has none of the problems normally associated with these materials.
Be prepared for HCFC ban in 2002
With a ban on the general use of HCFC-solvents being implemented on January 1st next year, 3M will be exhibiting approved and effective specialty solvent replacements for HCFCs.
Offering a genuine alternative, with none of the problems associated with these materials.
High volume users in fields such as automotive and consumer electronics can now gain access to the popular UV curable coating class (because of its rapid cure speed) with a level of processing ease and thermal cycling resistance never before achieved with UV materials.
By careful polymer engineering, from first principles, Concoat has developed what can be summarised chemically as a polyurethane-polyacrylate hybrid UV curable polymer structure.
Further reading
Co-solvent ousts 'trich' to clean aircraft parts
For the maintenance of precision aircraft components, British Airways Component Engineering at Hayes, has replaced trichloroethylene with a faster, more efficient co-solvent cleaning system.
If 'trich' is a problem, try this one
An aggressive cleaning solvent for medium to heavy-duty degreasing applications offers an ideal long-term replacement for n-propyl Bromide (nPB), Trichloroethylene (Trike), and other solvents.
Co-solvent cleaning process replaces 'trike'
Following a thorough review of available high performance solvents and systems, a plating company has replaced its trichloroethylene system with a semi-automatic co-solvent cleaning process.
This yields a macroscopic materials performance that, incredibly, is not dissimilar to the ease-of-processing and thermal cycling resistance offered by other established chemical coating material types such as the HumiSeal water-based ranges.
A key benefit is its low viscosity, which dramatically eases processing challenges in terms of being able to uniformly and quickly coat a board and ensure the coating spreads over all required areas.
In general UV curable coatings materials are more difficult to rework than, for instance, water-based alternatives.
Humiseal UV40 is an extremely flexible coating, particularly under the stresses associated with thermal cycling.
The coating is far less prone to cracking than all existing UV curable coatings, which has been the biggest drawback since their first introduction back in the 1980s.
The range has an exceptionally low solvents, (less than 3% content), that meets all ISO 14001 and major H and S/hazardous chemical regulatory requirements.
Lastly, UV curing ovens tend to be very compact, occupying less factory floor space than the machinery required to cure other types of coating material in a volume environment.
One way to reclaim factory floor space lost to the larger ovens and wave soldering baths demanded by the elevated processing temperatures of lead-free soldering.
The HumiSeal UV40 curables range deserves serious consideration by any medium to high volume coating user and any manufacturer in the process of switching to lead-free.
The CircuitKleen range of batch and in-line cleaning media for circuit boards, stencils and jigs is chemically engineered to offer the highest level of cleanliness for all lead-free and lead based soldering materials and SMT adhesives.
The range has been designed to help manufacturers comply with increasing strict environmental and health and safety legislation, including the RoHS, WEEE and VOC reduction directives defined by the European Union, and the ISO 14001 accreditation.
All of which have an impact upon the flux cleaning processes and associated cleaning media.
Typically higher temperatures of lead-free soldering processes, for example, will 'bake' and adhere flux residues onto boards more strongly than occurred with conventional lead-based soldering.
The CircuitKleen low VOC water-based environmentally friendly flux cleaner is part of Concoat's ongoing development in tackling these issues.
Although designed to be left on a board, some manufacturers still remove no-clean flux residues by cleaning, yet such residues have an elevated inertness that makes them difficult to remove chemically.
This situation will be exacerbated by the advent of no-clean lead-free solders.
This saponified, water-based flux cleaner addresses these issues, delivering a superior cleaning performance by exploiting chemically optimised yet 'green' compounds, to offer significantly enhanced rinse abilities that will safely and efficiently remove practically any solder paste, flux or wire residue.
Providing manufacturers with long term peace of mind.
Safe and pleasant for operators to use, it is virtually odour and foam-free, having minimal (trace) VOC content and being completely non-flammable.
This 'gentleness' extends to advanced anti-corrosion inhibitors that maximise protection of cleaning (i.e alkaline) sensitive metals such as copper and those commonly used in the aerospace sector.
CircuitKleen also offers excellent plastics and elastomer compatibility making it suitable for use with most makes of batch cleaning equipment, boards and components.
And can be used at lower process temperatures with shorter cleaning times.
Finally, accessing these benefits does not incur a financial penalty, as it has a much higher cleaning capacity than conventional products.
This means a smaller volume of material will last up to 30% longer than other formulations and clean a larger number of assemblies to yield an overall cost saving.
• HumiSeal Europe: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Manufacturingtalk email newsletter
• Manufacturingtalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
