Conformal coating thickness is one of the most important characteristics to ensure long-term reliability of your electronics. A minimum coating thickness is essential to provide the required function of the conformal coating, but if a conformal coating application is too thick, it can actually have negative effects on your level of protection.
Which conformal coating thickness should be applied to reach optimal protection?
For decades, HumiSeal products have been considered the “gold standard” in electronics protection. As a result, it is no surprise that unscrupulous chemical manufacturers have been continuously trying to profit from this reputation through the production of copycat or counterfeit products. While imitation is considered the sincerest form of flattery, the use of counterfeit materials is a serious danger to the integrity of your electronics production.
Topics: Conformal Coatings, counterfeit
For many electronics manufacturers, the original justification for specifying a silicone coating is lost deep within the mists of time and it may be time for a re-evaluation and consideration of the question,
“Do we really need a silicone conformal coating?”
Humiseal® remains in a uniquely qualified position to help you answer this question. Unlike many coatings sources, Humiseal offers a full line of all the major conformal coating technologies including acrylics, urethanes, synthetic rubbers, water-borne, and yes; silicones. As a result, you can be certain of an unbiased approach to product evaluation that will result in the most cost-efficient material to meet your needs.
There are a number of factors to consider when evaluating your application to answer whether there is really a need for silicone technology:
IPC CC-830 revision B is a conformal coating qualification standard mostly used by board fabricators, OEM design engineers, and coatings suppliers.
There are two fundamental uses of this IPC standard:
In this blog, we will go over some of the specifications along with tests requirements, passing criteria, and quality characteristics.
Topics: Conformal Coatings, Conformal Coating Process, Standard Qualifications, IPC-CC-830B
The conformal coating process, like any other processes, has different variables, inputs, and outputs. In order to be able to control the results of your application (outputs), we need to fully understand how each variable affects the process.
The importance of the variables
To get the right amount of liquid, thickness, right coverage, no contamination on keep out areas, etc., you need to identify and understand the variables of the process.
The most important variables:
In this blog, we will concentrate on reviewing the first variable: Viscosity
Topics: Conformal Coatings, conformal coating application, viscosity
When conventional coating methods such as hand spray, total dipping or robotic selective coating don’t provide the protection required, there is always selective dip coating.
What is selective dip conformal coating?
Selective dip coating is a process whereby the substrate rather than globally immerised in the coating, is discreetly coated in desired locales. The technique in one form or another, has been around for over 25 years and is used with both classic solvent-based coatings and 100% UV cure conformal coatings.
Topics: Conformal Coatings, Humiseal, Selective Dip Coating, Electronic Protection
The application of the conformal coating in a uniform and consistent coverage is a key challenge that defines the reliability of the finished product.
A thin coating will provide inadequate protection against corrosion or insulation between conductors. Conversely, if the conformal coating is too thick, it will increase the risk of forming other types of coating defects such as bubbles, insufficient curing, and potential cracking during thermal shock cycles.
Besides the verification of the process parameters such as coating viscosity and the application method is correctly setup, the amount of conformal coating material applied on the printed circuit boards can be measured before curing. For this, wet film conformal coating thickness gauges are used. This method ensures quality control while the coating material is still wet.
Topics: Conformal Coatings, Coating Application Preparation, Conformal Coating Process
One of the basic components used in most automatic or semi-automatic conformal coating processes is compressed air. Pressurized air moves the liquid coating from the tank, through the hoses and the valves onto the PCB. Since the pressurized air makes direct contact with the conformal coating, there are critical properties that must be taken into consideration, especially with moisture sensitive materials. What critical factors are important when working with UV40, UV500, 1A20 or any RTV Silicone from HumiSeal?
This blog post outlines the techniques required for the removal of HumiSeal UV cure conformal coating. The products covered in this article are:
There are 3 methods for the removal of HumiSeal UV conformal coatings:
All three methods will effectively remove the coating, depending on the process requirements, to allow individual component replacement and subsequent re-coating.
Topics: Conformal Coatings, Humiseal, Micro Abrasion
ENERGY STAR, The United States Environmental Protection Agency program that provides certification to buildings and consumer products which meet certain standards of energy efficiency, defines what a LED light is.
LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are semiconductor devices that produce visible light when an electrical current passed through them. LEDs are a type of Solid State Lighting (SSL), as are organic light–emitting diodes (OLEDs) and light–emitting polymers (LEPs).
Also states: Thermal management is probably the single most important factor in the successful performance of a LED product over its lifetime because the higher the temperature at which the LEDs are operated, the more quickly the light will degrade, and the shorter the useful life will be.
Topics: Blog, LED technology, Conformal Coatings
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