OAKLAND, CA – A new white paper from EMS provider Digicom Electronics explains how design and manufacturing conditions, along with myths about board cleanliness and contamination, have exacerbated cleanliness issues. The company used its experience in building electronics for medical devices to explain how cleaning can eliminate board contamination.

“Component manufacturers are continually developing new and smaller packages for components that are mere fractions of a millimeter and have board-to-component clearances of less than a mil,” said Mo Ohady, general manager of Digicom and coauthor of the paper. “Pick-and-place machines have new accessories that allow placement of these almost invisible parts. Components are placed extremely close together. After a considerable amount of research and experimentation, we found that it takes a special combination of chemicals, temperature, wash cycles, timing, and equipment to adequately clean under parts that small.”

“Cleanliness of PCB Assemblies Leads to Medical Device Reliability" is available at http://www.digicom.org/clean-pcb-assemblies.html.