Water-based flux cleaner is greener: News from HumiSeal Europe

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Synergie CKB401 flux cleaner is chemically engineered to offer superior cleaning performance with superior environment friendliness. CKB401 will help manufacturers to keep abreast of increasing strict environmental legislation. This includes the Reduction of Harmful Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives defined by the European Union.

These directives stipulate that by July 2006 no new electrical product sold in Europe will be able to contain harmful substances such as lead (Pb).

The scope of this legislation could be extended in the future to make the currently voluntary EU1999/13/EC VOC directive, or some variation of it mandatory, as well as imposing even tighter regulations on all processing materials used in close proximity to factory floor personnel.

All these developments impact upon the flux cleaning processes and associated cleaning media.

The 30C higher typical temperature of lead-free soldering processes will "bake" and adhere flux residues onto boards far more strongly than occurred with conventional lead-based soldering.

Hence Concoat CKB401 low-VOC water-based environmentally friendly flux cleaner is part of ongoing development in tackling these issues.

Although designed to be left on a board, some manufacturers still remove no-clean flux residues by cleaning.

Yet such residues have an elevated inertness that makes them difficult to remove chemically.

This situation will be exacerbated by the advent of no-clean lead-free solders.

Concoat Synergie CKB401 was designed from the outset to address these issues and to provide manufacturers with long term peace of mind.

This saponified, water-based flux cleaner delivers a superior cleaning performance by exploiting chemically optimised yet "green" compounds to offer significantly enhanced rinse abilities that will safely and efficiently remove practically any solder paste, flux or wire residue.

As a member of Concoat's ever expanding Synergie range of process materials, CKB401's electrochemical compatibility with other Synergie materials and long-term field reliability, as a consequence of its use, is guaranteed.

In application, the Concoat Synergie CKB401 is designed for use with aqueous batch cleaning operations and is also available in aerosol brush format as part of a convenient manual cleaning kit that comprises 200ml aerosol with brush attachment, 50ml aerosol with brush rinse and a 400ml air duster, useful for ad-hoc or localised cleaning.

CKB401 is also extremely safe and pleasant for operators to use being virtually odour and foam-free, having minimal (trace) VOC content and being completely nonflammable.

This "gentleness" extends to advanced anticorrosion inhibitors that maximise protection of cleaning (ie alkaline) sensitive metals such as copper and those commonly used in the aerospace sector.

CKB401 also offers excellent plastics and elastomer compatibility making it suitable for use with most makes of batch cleaning equipment, boards and components.

Finally, accessing these benefits does not incur a financial penalty: CKB401 has a much higher cleaning capacity than conventional products.

This means a smaller volume of material will last up to 30% longer than other formulations and clean a larger number of assemblies to yield an overall cost saving.

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