Abrasive Brush Cleaning: 5 Settings for Consistent Panel Prep Abrasive brush cleaning is the step that gives copper the surface profile that plating, mask and lamination all depend on. Too little brushing leaves oxide and handling soil in place, so adhesion suffers. Too much removes copper, rounds edges and drives…

Artwork Storage: 5 Rules to Protect Film and Registration Artwork storage is treated as filing, yet the film in the drawer defines every pattern the shop produces. Film changes dimension with temperature and humidity, loses density with age and picks up scratches from careless handling. When registration drifts or line…

Rinse Flow Rate Control: 5 Checks for Water-Efficient Cleaning Rinse flow rate control is where water use and cleaning quality meet. Too little flow and panels leave with residue; too much and the plant pays for water twice, once to purify it and again to treat it as waste. The…

Conveyor Lubrication Control: 5 Rules for Wet Process Lines Conveyor lubrication is the maintenance task most likely to create the defect it is meant to prevent. A wet process line carries panels over chemistry, and any lubricant that reaches a tank becomes an organic contaminant that shows up as plating…

Ozone Water Treatment: 5 Checks for a Reliable Oxidation Step Ozone water treatment is used in PCB shops to oxidize organics in process water, break down complexing agents in waste streams and control biological growth in reclaimed water loops. It is a powerful and clean oxidation method, but its performance…

SMD Changeover Verification: Setup Checks Before the First Board An SMD changeover is the interval between the last board of one product and the first acceptable board of the next, and it is the point in a shift where most errors are introduced. Feeders are swapped, programs are loaded, the…

X-ray Calibration for Void Measurement: Comparable Numbers An X-ray system does not measure a void directly. It produces a projection image and a program decides where the void begins and ends. X-ray calibration is what makes that decision repeatable, covering the tube settings, the detector response, the geometry of the…

Board Clamping on the Printer: Fiducials, Vacuum and Repeatability Before the squeegee moves, the printer has to hold the board flat and still. The clamp does that, and it does it thousands of times a shift with a repeatability that the vision system cannot improve on. Fiducial recognition corrects for…

Spring Probe Contact Resistance in ICT: Wear and Limits A spring probe is a small compliant contact that presses onto a test point and carries the measurement current. Its contact resistance adds to the resistance being measured, so a probe that has worn or become contaminated changes the result of…

DI Water Resistivity Control in the Final Rinse Resistivity is the resistance of water to carrying an electric current, and in a PCB final rinse it is used as a continuous indicator of how much dissolved ionic material the water is still picking up. Deionised water with nothing dissolved in…