Need low cost method of cleaning circuit boards. 1

[dan4lm]

I am a manufacturing engineer in an R&D/ low production environment. We build high density surface mount boards in very low quantity. Currently we clean our boards by hand, soaking and then brushing with an alcohol based solvent. I would prefer to use an inline or batch cleaner but the ones I've seen our all geared towards high volume production and are too expensive. I can't justify the cost for our small operation. Does anyone know of a cleaning method or system that is good at removing rosin flux and is in the 5-10 K range? Also does any one have any experience using a water soluble flux and a low cost aqueous/DI water cleaning system?

Thanks,

 

[tcampbe1]

I used an acid core solder on large scale circuit boards. We were soldering 14 ga copper wire to the boards as well as a couple of components with 20 to 24 ga copper leads. The acid core solder wetted out very well, and we got good strong joints.

We washed the boards quickly (within an hour or two) of soldering in a household size dishwasher hooked to an organic filter system. The filter system was made by North East Water Service, Inc., Burlington, MA. The solder was supplied by Contact East, No Andover, MA

The system was reliable and the only effluent was the filters which were a hazardous waste, but small.

We eventually switched to a no-corrode solder and stopped washing altogether. This was a savings but any corrosion or oxide on the components caused a problem with wetting out.