Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1189040
DECEMBER 2019 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 51 So, we thought, "Why don't we take a swing at this?" There have been a number of innovations that have pushed forward. Stencil clean- ing is one of those areas that people don't complain about much because they just wish it didn't exist. But once you start doing the research, you say, "Wait a minute. Do you see this?" Well, yes, we see that. It's not so much educating them about what's gone wrong; it's letting them know about a solution for a prob- lem that they know they have that they weren't willing to put big engi- neering time in to solve. Matties: What about the environmental side? You're talking about dealing with solders and things. What impact do you see there? Forsythe: The challenge on stencil cleaning of course is, once again, you're freeing up those solder balls, and those are made out of metal. The metals are not stuff that's supposed to go to drain, etc. If you can filter them thoroughly, you're okay. Typically, stencil cleaning solu- tions, because of the contaminants from the paste, are not things that generally go to drain. Sometimes, they can, but it depends on the local rules. It's also quite common for stencil cleaners to be the stuff that gets drummed off because then you have all the metal in there. All these materials are at least slightly alka- line. Lead is gone, but any dissolved metals are never a good thing. Matties: But your solution is biodegradable and non-hazardous. Forsythe: Exactly. We start out green, top to bottom. The challenge is when the contami- nant is not green. That's the case in a hand- ful of areas, certainly back in the tin-lead days with batch cleaners where you'd use the bath a lot; you'd need a lot of lead to get picked up. Matties: Let's talk a little bit about cleaning in general. What trends are you seeing? Forsythe: If you're a cleaning company, the trends are all positive. As we talked about ear- lier, miniaturization and increased density are changing the perception of cleaning because the same contaminant that was okay yester- day is now in a tighter piece of real estate and is less okay today, or perhaps not okay. Cus- tomers are dealing with those decisions, and that's simply growing the share of people that see cleaning as a value-added process. That's a very gradual thing. There's no flare going up or a swarm of people rushing for the field after a win on the pitch. It's a very steady, gradual increase. Matties: It seems like there's still an education about cleaning that is taking place. Forsythe: Absolutely, and it's even more so these days because let's face it, no-clean has been around for 20 years. Twenty years is the rough description of a generation when you talk about family and ancestors, so we've had a whole generation of people where what they used was called no-clean and believed it. Matties: That's the qualifier right there. Ini- tially, it was 20 years ago. Forsythe: It still is. The vast majority of the world uses no-clean, and the vast majority of them don't clean.