When disaster occurs, such as a flood or a fire, it is often assumed that electronic components need to be scrapped. This is not always the case. Using customized cleaning techniques that do not degrade bradley labels, legending or marking inks, Foresite can return your product to its original state. IPC protocols are followed and visual inspections are completed on your product to ensure its reliability. This saves both precious time and money in your disaster recovery effort.

This article, an older one published in Circuits Assembly January 2003 issue, still has very valuable lessons for today's PCB manufacturing processes. No-clean fluxes, when not properly applied or heated, can cause moisture absorption and conductive paths. When this happens, it is possible to clean a no-clean flux, removing the moisture absorbing flux and reducing your reliability risk.

Corrosion on the vias in the area between the component and the board surface was caused by flux wicking up the vias. In order to avoid this problem it is imperative to make sure that flux and moisture are completely removed when cleaning low standoff parts. Not doing so could lead to a failure.