Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1284035
80 SMT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2020 now, it's a little unstable. People have to save their money. Johnson: Do you find that facilities are more interested now in talking to you about the dross recovery product? Hardin: There was a two-month dry spell where there weren't really any engineers at the facili- ties because they were all working from home. But now engineers are back to work, and the drive we see is, "How do we save money? How do we reduce inventory? How do we reduce lead times?" Johnson: What do you see over the horizon for the solder alloy market? Are there some dynamics in play that could change things? Hardin: Yes. Over the last few years, the wave soldering industry has died down quite a bit. They've gone to a more efficient process called selective soldering. That type of soldering has a lot less waste. The old-style wave solder- ing machine would have a 2,000-pound sol- der pot constantly under turbulence, produc- ing probably about four to five pounds of dross an hour. Nowadays, the new machines pro- duce five pounds of dross in a day. There's an objective to be more efficient and reduce costs, and that's one way to do it. We're also here to say, "No matter what equipment you have, if It breaks the bond between the oxide and the metal and purifies it. Now, you have a solder bar that has no oxide impurities in it. Johnson: Is the MS2 a reagent in this process, or is it a catalyst? Hardin: It's more of a reagent. There's no bond at all between the alloy itself and MS2, so all it's doing is sequestering the oxide. When it does that, the oxide is what's kind of bonding up the dross, making the metal stick to the oxide. By sequestering the oxide, it releases the good metal. Johnson: Soap works because one end of the molecule is hydrophilic, and the other end of the molecule is attracted to oils; therefore, you connect the oil on one end, the water in the other end, and the dirt washes out. At that point, you probably have a sale. Hardin: When I go into a customer, and we get to that point where we are with the right peo- ple at the management level—the people that care if we're saving money—they are going to want to use it. And it works for all types of alloys. Johnson: What do you see going on in the mar- ket right now? There are still issues about lead solder, tin-lead solder, lead-free solder, and the like. Hardin: The only time we see tin-lead right now is with military or some specialty auto- motive safety stuff. It took a while, but right now, everything's pretty much lead-free. Even in China, I saw some tin-lead stick around for a little bit longer, but that has gone away. The real struggle right now is people trying to work in a safe environment. The economy's down, so consumer electronics are down. Many fac- tories, especially in Mexico, were shut down. Some are still only running at half capacity. Like the rest of the economy and world right Pure solder bars are formed when the solder cools.