Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/948150
14 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2018 adders that we've gotten back from customers is, "Oh, this is tremendously helpful. That's all great because we want our system to run well. But what's even better is when they say, "I got a board back that we made six months ago, and I need to do this audit to prove to the customer that we didn't do anything wrong. Now I've got this tremendous trove of cleaning data that says it is OK to move on to some other part of the process, or there is something wrong with the board." We weren't really thinking about that when we put it together; we were more in operational mode. But it's there, and the software can show the time window and zoom in so you can root around anywhere in the data set for a look back later. Matties: Is the data service a subscription program? How does that work? Forsythe: Well, both. At this point, it is a subscription that is included in the package, but we do see this as a subscription having a life of its own down the road. And there are lots of possibilities which are going to be evolving over the course of the next year. Matties: Let's back up and just talk a little bit about KYZEN and what you do, and then we'll connect the dots. Forsythe: We're in the cleaning materials busi- ness. Our business is developing products that will remove flux residues without harm- ing the parts, for material compatibility, label compatibility, all that sort of stuff. No-clean was invented 25 years ago. Well, we can all agree that we probably want residues inside our pacemaker cleaned or removed, whether it's put together with no-clean paste or not. Likewise, we can likely agree that the residues inside a child's toy are safe to stay there. And somewhere between those two clear in-points is where decisions get made, yea or nay, regarding whether cleaning is a value- adder or not. As the world of miniaturizations continues to grow, and devices continue to shrink, employing bottom termination compo- nents that are growing in popularity and creat- ing cleaning challenges, the general consensus of where that line between clean and no-clean is moving, drifting gently in the direction of more cleaning, rather than less cleaning. And cleaning is what we do. We evaluate popular soldering materials from 10 or 20 soldering companies. We have a data- base with decades of data, which we share the data with the individual solder materials company alone, so they get that feedback for future devel - opment purposes. In fact, some companies choose to put us in their product development cycle where we'll get several exper - imental formulas, and that's simply another data point for them to use as they make their final down selects. Sometimes, even we are surprised that we had an early look at a new product. We have all been to a show like this, and someone's introducing a new paste, saying, "Oh, we need to get some of this new product to test," and they say, "No, remember that XYZ product from last year?" "Yes, that's this one that we had tested months and months before." That's a common part of our busi - ness. We provide materials to get that cleaning done, not the hardware. We don't make clean- ing machines. Matties: But now you're in the data business. Forsythe: Well, we've been in the control busi- ness for many years because it needed doing. The cleaning machine companies didn't really see that as in their lane because it was a process control game, rather than a process set point, which is more what the machines are about. Matties: Right. Here's the temperature. Forsythe: Exactly, and that's what they're doing, and they're doing a great job. So, we've always