Reflow ovens have seen tremendous evolution over the years, starting from Infrared heating technology to more modern iterations of closed-loop convection. ELE Times brings you the best reflow ovens in the market today. One of the most important constituents of a PCB assembly line is reflow ovens. It’s inside a reflow oven that the thermal processing of solder paste on PCBs takes place. Reflow ovens come in almost all shapes and sizes and are designed for both small and large-scale operations. For large-scale operations, our target sector in this particular story, the most commonly used reflow ovens are inline or conveyor belt ovens.

What’s your top-of-the-line reflow oven?

Sreeram Srinivasan: Our reflow ovens in Bawal and RRW Chennai state-of-art conventional airflow ovens with 8 heating zones and 2 cooling zones that can handle 400mm width PCBAs. These ovens have exclusive PCBA center support for the extended PCB support to avoid PCB warpage. Online temperature monitoring for the PCBAs that are subjected to thermal profile. These machines can handle PCBs with thicknesses ranging from 0.5mm to 4mm. Component clearance is 30mm on the top and 25mm on the bottom. These reflow machines are nitrogen-enabled and have excellent soldering quality for aerospace, defense, and medical products.

Which application is this reflow oven targeted at?

Sreeram Srinivasan: Syrma promotes a lead-free soldering process across all its EMS facilities. The reflow ovens used in Syrma are lead-free soldering process compatible and meet ROHS standards with an enhanced N2 environment for best solderability.

What service/support/offering do you have on the device?

Sreeram Srinivasan: Online reflow profiling monitoring with CPK control and serial number wise reflow profile data analysis to ensure each PCBA has been produced with the best soldering quality. Low-power consumption due to large aluminum alloy heat plates, low carbon emission, and independent air velocity control advanced flux management and cooling system on N2 ovens with dual independent heat exchangers for maximum cooling effect. It also includes external water chillers for the (N2) oven. 

Konark 1020-10-Zone Reflow Oven

To cater to the versatile needs of the industry and various complex PCB types, EMS Technologies has launched a 10-zone reflow oven, Konark 1020. This machine results from 25 years of manufacturing experience over wave soldering, stencil printers, reflow ovens, and continuous in-house research and development.

Konark 1020 Machine Features

• Konark 1020 machine is equipped with a PC Windows 10 operating system that provides pull-down menus.
• Data logging traceability feature enables the user to select the important process parameters for which data collection is desired, either board-based or time-based
• Security password protection allows only authorized personnel to make changes to recipes.
• Adjustable blower speed
• Rails width adjustment for dual conveyor
• Dual conveyor with independent speed control with VFD
• PCB drop alarm.
• Automatic chain lubrication
• PID closed-loop temperature control + SSR

Advantages 

• Featuring 10-heating zone and 2-cooling zones
• Dual conveyor built-in option offers flexibility in manufacturing resulting in higher throughput.
• Remote diagnostics
• All India widespread service network catering to needs of customers
• In-house design & development resulting in solutions tailored to customer needs

How are reflow ovens configured?

Inline reflow ovens are configured with several heating zones followed by cooling section(s). Depending on the length and throughput of the oven, there may be few zones, 8 or less, or many zones, 12 or more. During the reflow process, the zones are programmed with a thermal set point. This set point corresponds to the temperature the circuit board should be exposed to as it passes through that zone. The program with the temperatures for all of the zones, as well as the belt speed, is referred to as “the recipe.” The temperature that the board sees as it’s processed through the oven is called “the profile.” The recipe is optimized to achieve the profile that the solder manufacturer has specified for the solder paste used on the board. Several specifications are employed, including a maximum and minimum peak temperature, flux activation time (FAT), time above the liquid (TAL), heating and cooling ramp rates, etc.

Inputs by Sreeram Srinivasan, CEO, Syrma SGS Technology

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