Never Any Compromise In PCB Safety！－ Curing

The global supply chain has been tight since the outbreak of the pandemic, and Taiwan’s printed circuit board (PCB) industry has become another one of the country’s guardian angels. Since plant safety is the primary concern of the manufacturing industry, let suppliers assist Cheer Time in maintaining industrial safety! Why are PCB companies concerned with the safety of curing equipment? The answer is simple: Global customers expect their supply chain to follow high standards of corporate social responsibility. Could you imagine going to work in an unsafe factory? Personnel are at risk while working at the solder mask station. In today’s world, where labor rights are taken seriously, every decision of policy-makers affect the long-term value of an enterprise. Today, let’s talk about the safety standards for curing equipment.

Curing: A Matter of Temperature

The curing process (precure and postcure) is critical to the entire process of manufacturing PCBs. Curing relies on high temperatures, and affects the yield rate of PCBs and IC substrates. Put simply, besides uniformity of temperature, heating methods, and temperature control, the hot air from heating must be smoothly discharged through correctly connected piping. PCB engineers are practical people. Good industrial curing equipment can help customers enhance efficiency, improve productivity, and measure an even, ideal temperature curve. Due to the rapid development of PCB products, in addition to traditional single-stage heating curing equipment, multi-stage heating control using programmable logic controllers (PLCs) is also used to meet product requirements. As there are also special requirements for cooling, air-cooling or water-cooling systems can be used to assist in heating, sustaining temperatures, and cooling, to improve quality.

Are you still slacking off? No messing around with the safety check!

Regular scheduled maintenance, in order to maintain curing quality, besides checking the high-temperature clean oven, PCB plants also need to check the piping and where exhaust is vented, as well as replace HEPA filters periodically and inventory the stock of various consumables. Each little small thing means is a big deal for safety! If PCB plants test their luck, or fail to run periodic maintenance, fine dust will reduce the cleanliness of the clean room, and some flammable objects may burn when heated, causing fires, as has happened in a few PCB plants. Since the PCB industry is the mother of the electronics industry, any negligence may become headline news. Don’t overlook this!

The Road to Sustainable Electronic Equipment

Sustainable development has become a goal of listed companies in recent years, leading to stakeholders, including customers, investors, banks, and individual shareholders at home and abroad paying extra attention to improving the safety of PCB plants. Take GROUP UP Industrial (GP) in Yangmei, Taoyuan, for example. Through the Industrial Safety and Health Association (ISHA), Taipei Printed Circuit Association (TPCA), among others, it invited scholars and experts to review the structure and wiring safety of the hot-air oven and nitrogen hot-air oven, and acquired Taiwan’s first certificate of curing equipment safety. GP further published its practices in TPCA Quarterly, hoping to push the industry to voluntarily raise its safety standards. Safety improvements can become future business opportunities. When PCB customers have peace of mind using PCB products, and every PCB plant improves its safety, this will make the PCB industry more energetic and competitive!

Never Any Compromise In PCB Safety！