To Clean or No Clean?

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

Matties: Well, civil litigation is also driving down to the component level now.

Konrad: A couple years ago, I served as an expert witness in a civil litigation matter. It was a company that had a technology and was fueled by venture capitalists. They had this technology, but they didn't have the ability to make it so they used a contract manufacturer to build their product. Then they installed their product all throughout North America in streets, below the ground. Their product began to show signs of failure. Their product was run by a battery which was guaranteed to run for 10 years. After several months, the batteries were failing and they couldn't figure out why.

The owner of the technology sued the contract manufacturer and said, "You screwed this up and we're going to sue you for $30 million." I helped represent the contract manufacturer and other experts were representing the OEM. It turned out that this particular contract manufacturer was told that they had to clean the part but not to use any cleaning chemical, just water. Water's great when you want to remove water soluble substances, but even though they were soldering with a water soluble flux, they had other stowaway contaminants on the board which didn't really sign up to be in the water soluble army. None of those contaminant species were removed.

Then a part was added during the assembly process manually, hand soldered, and it was a very large part with a lot of mass to it. It used a lot of flux, soldered with “no clean", and did not clean the assembly. Then it gets better. They wanted to pot the boards in silicone so they could put them in the ground. Their thought was they didn't want any of the contaminant species that are in the ground, moisture and anything else, to get onto the board, which is good thinking. The problem was they sealed in all the sins of the manufacturing process. Nothing could get out.

What couldn't get out was moisture, and there was moisture between the layers of the board. They never baked prior to potting. What they ended up having was electrical leakage on the board which drained the battery. They had two units here, two units there, 12 units there, all over North America that had to be dug up on the streets and removed and replaced. All over an avoided cost of six cents per assembly. If you ask them, had they known what would happen, would they have spent six cents more and the answer is of course yes. Now they're cleaning, but only after this giant litigation matter. It does hit home. The decisions of manufacturing do come back to bite you or reward you. Either way.

Again, I'm not saying everyone needs to clean. Frequently we don't realize things even need to be cleaned until things start failing.

Matties: Yeah, you need to be mindful of these variables and influences that you're mentioning.

Konrad: Cleaning adds value and it never has a downside. Although I sound very self-serving when I say this, spend six cents. The worst that can happen is they waste six cents per assembly. Now that could be a huge number to some people. Generally, in the real world for us mere mortals that don't produce 100 million boards a day, it's not a big number, and it's a huge insurance policy. It's self-serving for me to say it, but it's true. That's why we're in this business. The cleaning process does add value and it reduces liability.

Matties: It does. Mike, I think this is really good. We certainly appreciate you sharing your expertise.

Konrad: My pleasure. Thanks for asking good questions.

Matties: Thank you.

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