Produce inert gas in-house

As part of the many different soldering processes, inert gas is used to avoid oxides and ensure high-quality soldered joints. This reduces complex and cost-intensive reworking and repairs. Furthermore, dross formation is avoided. The use of nitrogen not only improves soldering joints, but also results in increased cleanliness of the assemblies and a higher wetting speed. Furthermore, the costs for possible reworking are reduced. The consumption of solder and flux can also be reduced, which also enables additional, significant savings.

Soldering under nitrogen is not used in all electronics production, because it always depends on the production and the specifications. In cases where the use of nitrogen is necessary, there are two options: either nitrogen is delivered and stored in tanks or the nitrogen is produced in-house. The nitrogen produced with the help of generators meets the requirements for various soldering processes such as selective, wave or reflow soldering. An innovative and extremely efficient technology for extracting nitrogen from the ambient air helps to save costs for uninterrupted N2 supply to a considerable extent. The generators work with the help of pressure load change technology. For this purpose, ambient air is fed into a valve block with the required pressure via an air compressor. This automatically ensures that the compressed air is alternately fed into two adsorption containers equipped with a carbon molecular sieve. These alternately switch from filter mode to regeneration mode. Thus, in one container, oxygen as well as carbon dioxide molecules from the ambient air are adsorbed in the sieve, while the sieve regenerates in the second container under compressed air relief. The nitrogen obtained in this way is fed into a product container.

Further technical processes ensure that the generated nitrogen with a quality of 2.5 to 3.0 is enriched with small amounts of hydrogen, which reacts with the residual oxygen. This purifies the nitrogen to a quality of 5.0 or even 6.0. The technical innovation makes it possible to produce a larger quantity of high-purity nitrogen, especially for THT production, with smaller, more energy-efficient air compressors with an air factor of 2.9 or higher.

For easy operation of the generator, the soldering units and the compressor should be connected via an interface. This allows the operator to control and monitor the nitrogen production process as well as the selective soldering processes via a monitor and software. The complete system for nitrogen production is developed and presented to the customer as part of a machine project. This requires close cooperation between the soldering system and generator manufacturer, so that the customer receives a complete service by two partners from one source.