Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1379105
16 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2021 Forsythe: If you assemble it poorly, they don't work well, either. If my pick-and-place system or my reflow oven doesn't work well, how's my reliability going to go? e reality is, we're in an industry where we've got to get everything right almost all of the time. We're not baseball, where if you bat .400, they remember your name for 100 years. We keep talking about four nines, not .400. You've got to do it right. at goes for every process on the line. at's our world, but we like it, and so do our consumers. We certainly like that world when we get on an airplane, and it doesn't break very oen. We like reliability and we think we should work hard to do well. Johnson: ere's a push in the industry to be even more reliable. We're including even more electronics into personal transportation, mov- ing toward electric vehicles. Even if you're not in an electric vehicle, the amount of electron- ics in your car or truck is dramatic. Forsythe: Absolutely. ere has been dramatic change over the last 20 years or so. Electric cars aside, just look at a typical pickup truck. Years ago, the only electric things were maybe the cigarette lighter, head and taillights, and the radio. at was it. Now, you can't even get into it without electronics. We can't run it without electronics and all those batteries. Batteries are good, but if they are made poorly, they also can do weird things, like catch on fire. at's why you can't take some batteries on airplanes. With that high reliability, it turns out that the general notion of electric vehicles is good for the cleaning guy. Johnson: en there's the other part of it in electric vehicles, for example. at's when you start looking at the sensors, the LIDAR, the optical sensors and the Wi-Fi, that need to be connected together for autonomous driving. Suddenly, that requires a mean time between failure that is much higher. Forsythe: When no-clean came around, it was not a great time to be the cleaning guy. We said, "is really is pretty bad." But time has gone on, and we've all survived because of the combination of the increasing pervasiveness of what might be called mission-critical applica- tions. Now, let's face it, with a manual clutch, you didn't even need a battery to start a car. You could jump-start a car by getting it rolling, then you'd pop it into first gear and the motor would start. It would work. at's not true any- more. at's not even close to true anymore. e complexity of the systems is not the only thing that's changed; so has this mission crit- icality perception and expectation. ere are more automated parts. at sensor that was just doing dumb things and was not very excit- ing, now someone could die if that sensor fails so I need an MTBF that's huge. at sensor is probably going to get cleaned to help achieve that level of reliability. Johnson: And the manufacturer needs hun- dreds of thousands a month. Forsythe: God bless them. We couldn't be hap- pier. Johnson: Tom, how do those pressures change solutions for cleaning? We're talking now about not only being thorough, but also dra- matically increased throughput. Forsythe: Cleaning is a combination of time, temperature, mechanical energy, and a selected operating concentration. We previously talked about the critical nature that the cleaning agent contact the surface to be cleaned. ese We certainly like that world when we get on an airplane, and it doesn't break very often.