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SMT electronics assembly manufacturing forum.


Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe)

#5322

Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe) | 22 February, 2001

Hello all

I just wanted to spread the word regarding the use of sugar to remove burnt-in flux.

Dissolve sugar into warm water and spray it on the area that You want to clean,let it work for a short while and rub.

If you want to do it the manual way: Just wet the surface, take a lump of sugar and rub, it won�t scratch aluminium but it�ll remove all the burnt-in flux. This works for me and the sugar that it leaves behind I�ll just rinse it of with water.

For us it works a lot better than the solvents we have.

I am waiting for Mark Hodge at Electrovert to confirm this, Hans-Gunter Ulzhofer at SMT has already confirmed and their service people already use it.

I know that this sounds totally crazy, but if You try it, please post your results here on SMTnet or mail me.

(It would be nice to make money out of this idea but it is sort of difficult to patent the use of sugar and water...)

Best regards

Mattias

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#5341

Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe) | 22 February, 2001

Kwazy, man. Environmentally safe, maybe, but what about tooth decay?

I'm gonna try it, just wait 'til I finish my Wheaties.

Shirley you jest!!! [Don't call me Shirley!!! We don't know each other well enough to be a first name basis.]

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Cosine Theta

#5343

Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe) | 23 February, 2001

Wow! It really works. I used Sprite instead of the hussle of melting suger. I did not use Coke as it leave behind a black stain.

Now, I need to convince the facility people it will not attract ants. Or maybe it will be process inherant that ants will be there so IPC spec needs to cover this, for example no more than 2 ants per sq inch of PCB.

(Pls don't be offended, Smile!)

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Travis Slaughter

#5348

Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe) | 23 February, 2001

Ok I could not pass this one up so I tried it out today, it didn�t work for me. Could I get more information such as flux type, and sugar concentration? I used Kester RMA 285 and concentration almost to saturation (looked almost like syrup). I wander if I could get the FAA to buy this off if it did happen to work?

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#5353

Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe) | 23 February, 2001

Ok. F.Y.I How I could make this work: We use Almit V14, and SMT ovens. You can say that we don�t do our maintenance as good as we should. Our Smt Quattro peaks are equipped with process gas cleaning (wich works quite good actually)

I ripped out the center support which was more or less black from residues. I wet the surface and took something lika 20 lumps of sugar and rubbed( i had to wet it a couple more times) I first tried Dr. O.K Wack, didn�t work as good as I wanted then I tried isoprophanol, same result.... From an other branch I got the information that I could try sugar. it worked. my basic experience from chemistry is that if You want to clean something you need the solvent to have a longer choal chain than the product that you want to remove. correct me if I�m wrong but sugar has 18 choal atoms. I believe that the residues has a structure containing less than 18 choal atoms If someone has any information regarding what the residues contents is please enlighten me.

anyway it worked for us. regarding what IPC would say about the allowed amount of ants on a PCB I�d say that as long as they don�t cause any short circuit, they don�t really bother me.

Best regards Mattias

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Cosine Theta

#5483

Todays crazy idea?! (environmental safe) | 7 March, 2001

Tried, it doesn't work. The kitchen grease cleaner is still the best. Anyone interested to know which brand?

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Fluid Dispensing Aerospace