Seeing the title one can guess that maybe there are COnformal coating VIDeoconferences or similar associative links between the two. We are also aware that with the appearance of COVID the demand for medical electronics has risen and probably also medical electronics contain parts where conformal coating is applied.
However, the real link between the two is that COVID woke us all up pointing out that health is a precious asset. The World also learned that the enemy may be small and invisible but threatening and deadly. Also, COVID attacks humans through the lungs and affects mostly breathing first. So, we need to protect us against invisible and sometimes not smellable agents that we may breathe.
In the electronics industry, there are several process steps where solvents can be inhaled potentially. One of them is conformal coating application. When health aspects are mentioned, stronger smell possibly can be tolerated versus light smell but harmful effects. ABchimie focuses on health concerns and developed AVR80 BA conformal coating. An acrylic conformal coating easy to apply and which dries at room temperature. When applying manually, the odours are inhaled but the solvents are not dangerous to the health. Its UV-traceable blue tracer makes inspection easy. For more information and for the next step towards protection of your staff’s health please visit ABchimie or contact Deery Brook.
To further improve the situation of solvent evaporation (and not to pay for the solvent that you need to evaporate anyway, plus to avoid any potential porosity during evaporation from thicker cross sections) the logical choice is to go for solvent free coatings.
Moreover, for most of the recent qualification of a new conformal coating into the automotive market, the criteria to select a solvent free material has become mandatory. Those coatings need some way to “kick-in” curing. The reaction components are packed into the formula but there is some way to initiate curing otherwise the shelf-life would be very short, the material could cure in the package.
Heat curing affects the assembly, boards, components, and takes long time and when inline process is used that also means big floorspace in production. UV mercury curing is a gentler process for the assembly, but mercury lamps are slow to heat up, consume a lot of power, and generate ozone which is also not good for health. UV LED sources are available and ABchimie have snap-cure products that can be cured in seconds by UV LED sources. For technical details about the differences you can see this article.
Generally, ABchimie provides solutions that help protecting our precious electronic assemblies but what is more important they have such formulations that also help preserving our most precious treasure: OUR HEALTH.
