September 2010

Use of Nitrogen Generators
within electronic PCB production

During the last 8 years, the use of selective soldering machines has increased within the production of PCBs (printed circuit boards) in Scandinavia. The reason is that they are suitable for production of small volumes of PCBs, now when a mass production is moving east.

In July 2006, an EU directive of using lead-free soldering materials was implemented. This is a challenge to the market and changed many of those parameters earlier used when soldering. Lead in the solders was forbidden and new alloys appeared on the market, mostly containing higher amount of silver. Higher temperature was needed for the soldering, which required new type of components. All these led to higher cost and a demand for improving the production, quality, and cost.

One of the solutions was to solder in an inert atmosphere to reduce the waste of solder and to get better soldering joints. The most economical inert gas is nitrogen, produced by a nitrogen generator.

The advantages given by nitrogen are
• much less dross, can go from 85 g/hr down to 1 g/hr
• shorter wetting time to half the time needed for wetting in air
• shorter time for temperatures over the melting point
• better wetting (appearance)
• fewer voids (inclusions of gas)
• no risk of bridges between solder joints

In the report “NoNE lead-free soldering guideline” from the Nordic Innovation Centre they say the following:
"This could lead to the conclusion that inert atmosphere gives the best overall economy for the process. Alloy economy aside, the stability of the process increases dramatically when using nitrogen."

Oxymat has had a close cooperation with HVL Industriteknik AB in Sweden during the past years. They have sold, among other things, nitrogen generators for this application with great success. 
In Sweden, there have been more than 15 nitrogen generators sold to into this market. We have among others customers producing PCBs, cellular phones producers, defense industries and distributors of soldering machines recommend us. The purity of the nitrogen must be 99.5% or better with an average flow to a selective soldering machine of 2-3 Nm³/hr.

Open House Day in Oxymat

During 27th August we organized a premiere Open day. Our intention was to introduce company for our partners, local people and last but not least for members of our families and especially for our children.

Jesper Sjögren, CEO of the company, introduced Open House day. In opening speech, he recalled the start of production in Vaďovce in 2006, in short described Oxymat´s  journey in Slovakia during the last four years and revealed future business development.

Thereafter, Open day continued with excursion tour of production areas with demonstration of company activities. Residents concerned themselves about our products. During further discussions, they appreciated prepared environmental arrangements to minimize noise pollution during our testing processes.
Children were satisfied too - jumping air castle, face painting, and PC games engaged them for hours. We were glad that all found time to visit Oxymat and later participated in friendly talks with tasty goulash and beer.

Open house day was overall very successful and we are looking for next year.

New Marketing Coordinator in Oxymat

In August, Milan Rusnak has started as a new marketing coordinator in our company. He came from industrial and power generation sector with experience with B2B sales and marketing. He graduated in Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Slovak technical university and Marketing studies at Open University.

Welcome in Oxymat.