The steps involved in manual and automated contamination removal.

Printed circuit boards are subjected to many harsh environmental conditions, including extreme temperatures, strong chemicals, corrosive salts, dust and moisture. Encapsulating them with a protective conformal coating makes sense. Conformal coatings keep harmful elements from touching delicate components and degrading performance of the boards. However, for optimum PCB longevity, functionality and reliability, it is imperative boards are perfectly clean and dry before conformal coating.

PCB contamination comes from many sources: transport, handling, storage and manufacturing. The most common examples of PCB contamination are fingerprint oils and salts, flux residue, tape or other adhesive residue, solder balls, and even some inks or chip bonder.

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