Charlie Pitarys

Charlie Pitarys has submitted responses to the following questions.

Full Aqueous Clean or Local Spot Clean
With water-soluble fluxes it will be best to clean the whole PCB again. If you already have a water wash ...

Cleaning Under Low Clearance Components
In an update to the original post five years ago, there are now available aqueous cleaning solutions designed specifically to ...

Hand Sanitizer Contamination
Ten years ago, Doug Pauls and Michael Vosatka of Rockwell Collins, authored a paper for IPC APEX that provided a ...

Cleanliness Requirement for Populated Printed Boards
W.H. an interweb search shows this to be a European requirement for German automotive OEM's. The title is, "Inspection of ...

Application Using No-Clean and Water Soluble Fluxes
From my experience this is acceptable however a water soluble flux cored wire needs to be effectively cleaned. It must ...

Moisture Sensitive Components in Flooded Storage Facility
From your question it appears that the components were not submerged with the flood waters. If this is the case ...

Solder Paste Prep Before Use
S.S.for storage and preparation of the solder paste you should always refer to thebest practices defined by your solder paste ...

Question About J-STD-001
You will hear a common phrased answer, "It all depends." You have not specified the final application of your assemblies. ...

Challenging Cleaning Problem
If possible, assemble the board with the ECG circuits with high impedance differential amplifiers, BGA processors and ASICs before attaching ...

White Legend Ink Turning Pink
In almost 30 years in this industry I have never seen thathappen. I would suspect the flux vapors in the ...

Cleanliness After Coating Removal
My first question to you will be what are you using to remove the polyurethane and second, what flux are ...

Deionized Water Sample Testing
P.C. the DI water will always read highest at the source. DI water is only DI water in its purest ...

Flux Oozing from Insulated Wires
K.C. the root cause of this is the flux itself. Flux must first be prevented from wicking up there. A ...

White Discoloration After Ultrasonic Cleaning
After many years of involvement in the PCB and precision cleaning industry the visible white residue issue by far has ...

Gold Edge Contact Flux Contamination Failures
LS this failure scenario is likely a result of several factors.A no clean flux when processed correctly will meet many ...

Cleaning with Sodium Bicarbonate
I am assuming you are relying on the abrasiveness of the sodium bicarbonate as fine scrub compound to remove the ...

Immersion Gold PCB's with Oxidation
Gold should not form oxides from sitting around orheating. Gold is a noble metal because it doesn't form many harmfulcompounds. ...

Ultrasonic Cleaning Solution
I am assuming you are using an aqueous solution in the ultrasonic cleaner right now and have a DI water ...

Special Cleaning Needs for BGA and QFN Components
S.P. you make no reference to the flux or solder alloy currently being used so I will make a general ...

Solvent Attacking Flex Circuits
T.G. I have several customers today that routinely clean flex circuits using a vapor degreaser containing a nPb solution similar ...

Steam Cleaning PCB Assemblies
You make no reference to the type of flux you need to clean. This is very important in order for ...

Delay Before Washing Water Soluble Flux
A common answer in this industry, "...it depends". There has already been several fine reasons submitted for or against this ...

Water Washing Pressure
You can investigate the products from Tekscan located in Boston, MA. We played with one of their testers about 3-plus ...

Cleaning PCB's of Oxidation
Oxidation is simply the combination of a substance with oxygen. The process cannot be stopped. Yes proper storage and handling ...

Cleaning Conformal Coated Boards After Rework
I agree with the response posted earlier by Ms. Jade Bridges at Electrolube, Ltd. In a follow up response I ...

Abrupt Decrease in DI Water Resistivity
An abrupt change as you described will be hard to nail down without more specifics on your wash process. The ...

Wave Solder Pallets
I have polled a few folks who did the change over and I also contacted a well known tooling company ...

Post Print Inspection Issue
Scrapping out the misprint board is certainly a viable and sometimes cost saving alternative over cleaning them. Does labor cost ...

Pros and Cons of Cleaning No-clean
The pros & cons of cleaning circuit boards are monumental in opinions and applied science from both sides of the ...

Flux Residue Causing Test Issues
Flux residue on connector pins at times can prove challenging to resolve. It appears you are running a true No ...