Cleaning Electronics with an Ultrasonic Cleaner
Ultrasonic cleaning has become one of the most popular ways to clean electronics. The process saves time and improves results without compromising safety. Let's take a quick look at how an ultrasonic electronics cleaner can be used effectively for circuit boards, PCB, and electrical assemblies.
Advances in Ultrasonic Technology for the Electronics Industry
If you regularly clean electronic parts, an ultrasonic electronics cleaner is the best tool for the job. The common concern is that ultrasonic cleaners will destroy delicate components. However, advances in ultrasonic technology have eased this concern by replacing the single frequency wavelength approach—known to harm electronic parts—with a variable frequency approach, called “sweeping.” This advance in ultrasonic technology has not only led to reduced production costs, but has proven to enhance reliability, thus reducing warranty costs as well.
For PCB cleaning or when cleaning populated PCBs, the aim is to remove flux residues from PCBs, hybrids and DCBs. State-of-the-art PCB Cleaning processes are able to effectively remove all types of flux residues, ranging from RMA to newly developed synthetic materials.
Although the so-called „NoClean“ production has proved itself for many production purposes in the Low-End area, the cleaning of High-End assemblies is essential.
To ensure the reliability of bonding and coating processes, it is of utmost importance to clean the assemblies before bonding/coating. Resin and activator residues that lead to poor coating and bonding adhesion, as well as corrosion and electrical failure are not removed from the assembly during No-Clean manufacturing processes. Furthermore, lead-free solder pastes and flux systems newly introduced to the market during the conversion to lead-free soldering contain a higher content of resin and more aggressive activators.
Modern cleaning technologies have therefore been designed to cope with no-clean formulations, and with adequate equipment optimization this problem can be prevented. We offer water-based, semi-aqueous and water-free cleaning processes. Various cleaning systems are available for cleaning both lead-free and lead-based assemblies.
From left to right: Flux untouched, flux affected and partially removed, flux mainly removed, flux fully removed.