SolderStar Ltd, specialist in the design, development and manufacture of thermal profiling equipment for the lead-free electronics industry has added new capabilities for the measurement of flux positioning and performance which will be shown for the first time at Productronica in Munich. Engineers can now monitor flux position accuracy during daily benchmarking of machine performance thanks to the new flux measurement system for selective soldering machines. Precision sensors and complimentary measurement circuits have been designed that when used in conjunction with the company’s existing instruments allow flux to be easily assessed. Mark Stansfield, managing director, said: “Productronica is the perfect platform in which to introduce the industry to our latest capability, a first for process measurement instruments at product level! The capability for the detection of flux presence and position verification when sprayed upon an assembly has been a requirement for both the customer and machine manufacturer. This type of measurement poses a number of different problems compared to the normal parameters we usually measure from the soldering process. Traditionally we are using thermocouples measurement circuits or digital I/O. It has taken a number of evolutions to achieve the capability to add this functionality to our instruments.”
One of the main problems of designing a system to measure flux is making the sensor construction suitable for daily use in the production environment, coupled with differing performance of flux models available. Mark added, “We have developed an elegant solution to this problem; our approach gives the system the capability to learn and be programmed to deal with any measurement changes resulting in the flux chemistry used. The material we use in the sensor heads are all titanium or high temperature thermoplastics, this results in a high quality unit which will stand the rigours of production life.” The Flux measurement system will be added to the mini wave selective product of the company which provides a ‘one pass’ platform for measuring X and Y speed, solder temperature, preheat profiles, contact time and now flux positioning verification. Additionally the multi-wave instrumentation will be available with configurable inputs supporting flux detection to allow the customer to measure flux performance within their own test fixtures. The flux measurement system will be showcased along with the portfolio of instruments and software tools which satisfies all of today’s thermal process control needs, including full-feature high performance product profiling for reflow, wave, vapour and selective solder processes.
Productronica, Booth A4.145/3
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