Altus Offer Energy Saving Solutions for Soldering

The rising cost of energy is putting a strain on everyone, including those within the electronics industry. As wholesale gas and electricity prices continue to rise, finding solutions to reduce consumption is now a top priority for companies.

Altus Group, a leading distributor of capital equipment in the UK and Ireland, is providing its customers with energy-efficient solutions to reduce costs, including ASSCON vapour phase soldering systems.

“Electronics manufacturing is energy intensive,” said Joe Booth, CEO, Altus Group. “It is very important that businesses look at efficient production solutions and optimise machinery to ensure it not only delivers on quality, but that it does so in a cost-effective way.

“ASSCON has an effective solution when it comes to soldering. The largest consumers of electricity in SMT production are the reflow soldering systems. Although this process is very popular, its energy consumption is high. The excessive amount of power used by convection reflow systems is due to the ineffective heat transfer via air.

“To combat this ASSCON has developed vapour phase soldering solutions that offers 20 times better heat transfer than air. Because it uses GALDEN® an oxygen-free process, its efficiency is many times higher than heating through convection. By using liquid the systems power consumption is reduced by up to 70%, and using just 4.2 kWh per h/measurement it equates to a huge saving in energy use.

“Vapour phase soldering is not only an energy saving solution, but it is also the ideal process for modern, complex PCBA technology.  With easy and flexible adjustable temperature gradients there is the assurance that each product has the optimal, reproducible temperature profile,” concluded Joe.

One of the most recent ASSCON vapour phase systems to be included in the Altus portfolio is the VP2100. Designed for mass-production, it is just 2.70m in size and so it can be easily integrated into any assembly line.

Using an innovative oxygen-free process, it is not only energy efficient, but importantly preheating and soldering is performed under exacting conditions so product overheating, component damage or PCB delamination does not occur.