Repair is Back!
Maintain values, minimise rejects, avoid electronic scrap
Maintain values, minimise rejects, avoid electronic scrap
Repair is back! – this slogan summarises the current development in the field of assembly repairs. It is becoming ever clearer that the finite resources of planet earth have to be used more intelligently. Daniel Calleja Crespo, the General Director for the Environment in the EU Commission, summed the situation up as follows: It is true that we have discovered other planets similar to earth, but until these can be used we have to manage with the one earth we have!
In line with this, the European Economy and Social Committee (EWSA) demands the avoidance and reduction of electronic scrap, while the service life of products should be extended. Thus the EWSA advises manufacturers to make repairs to their products easier. Amended guidelines (RoHS and WEEE) aim to reduce pollutants in products and to recuperate materials. The EU Commission supports new business models related to circular economy processes, private organisations such as “Repair Cafés” are picking up on the initiative and offering support with repairs of a wide range of different products. Some manufacturers have recognised the trend and are offering durable and repair-friendly products.
*Report by the EWSA on the subject “For sustainable consumption: the service life of industrial products and consumer information in favour of new trust”, Thierry Libaert, Jean Pierre Haber, Brussels, 17.10.2013.
Repair of electronic assemblies
Within assembly production or the repairs of electronic products, it is often economic interests that motivate companies to repair their boards or systems. During production, rejects occur again and again – faulty components, insufficient solder paste printing or equipping errors can never be completely avoided. In many cases, it is little things such as jumpers, an open solder connection or wrong resistor or capacitor that prevent an assembly from working properly. In order to maintain the value of the produced assemblies, professional and qualified repair processes pay off. For this, Ersa offers its customers a balanced package of products and services related to repair soldering. The portfolio ranges from the entry-level soldering station i-CON PICO through the multi-channel soldering and desoldering station i-CON VARIO 4 to partly and fully automatic rework systems. In addition, Ersa offers soldering training and seminars in order to guide users purposefully to a successful soldering result.
BGA repairs in just a few minutes
Integrated components can only be soldered and desoldered using classic manual soldering tools to a limited extent. In the case of SMDs with concealed component connections (BTC), the use of a rework system is essential in order to remove the faulty microcontroller safely from the board and solder a new one in its place, for example. In the most straightforward case and up to a component size of 30 x 30 mm, this can be carried out using the rework system HR 200: the assembly is preheated using an IR heater from below, while a 400 W hybrid overhead emitter supplies the preset soldering energy from above. Depending on the board and presetting, such a soldering process takes between one and three minutes. The most well known component in professional repairs is the BGA (ball grid array). These components often present a challenge particularly for new products. Thermally imbalanced solder profiles, component features or aspects of the board or auxiliary materials create faults during processing. Soldering faults on BGAs can only be discovered with X-ray systems or optical inspection. in addition, these components are comparatively expensive and are used in complex, high-grade electronic circuits. This makes successful repairs all the more attractive. This is where HR 550 and HR 600/2 come in – they offer partly automated or fully automated desoldering, positioning and soldering processes for BGAs and practically all other SMD designs. Thanks to the temperature control in the closed loop control circuit, a soldering result comparable to the series process can be achieved on every assembly during the first process.
Avoidance of electronic scrap
Highly developed process chains and specialised companies for the recycling of electronic scrap do now exist, but the methods used require a lot of energy, need special materials (metals) to be used and always leave an unusable residue behind. The mountains of electronic scrap being “further processed” in Asia and Africa have hardly been reduced either. Accordingly, repairs not only offer advantages in terms of cost, they also reduce the volume of rejects and thus avoid electronic scrap. If the mentality that repairs are worth it manages to prevail, this will go easy on the energy and material resources of planet earth long-term.
