Blundells have developed a simple and extremely effective system for recycling oxidised solder. The Blundell Soldabac will reclaim a minimum of 50% of pure usable solder from dross that has been skimmed off the solder bath.

Like many good ideas, the
development of the Soldabac has involved working with customers, listening and responding to their feedback and involving them with field
trials.

The result is a portable unit that holds 10 kilos of dross that can be either skimmed directly off the wave soldering machine or transferred from a dross bucket. The dross is heated for one hour during which time the solder separates from the oxides

and the solder drains into an ingot mould.

The bi-product from lead free solder is a black tin rich powder which a number ofrecycling companies are very happy to collect without charge.

The pay back time varies
according to the amount
of dross a customer
produces.

A company that produces 10 kilos of SAC dross per week will save at least 50% of the cost to replace the solder
- a saving of between
£3000 and £5000 per
year depending on the
alloy.

Unsurprisingly for a
product that ticks a lot of
environmental boxes as well as saving thousands of pounds every year, the response to the launch of the Soldabac has been tremendous.

Contract manufacturer Cemgraft has expanded its rework capability with the installation of an Ersa IR650 Dynamic IR rework station.
Cemgraft’s engineering manager, Steve Parks says: “We already had an Ersa IR500, purchased about 5 years ago, which had served us well but was designed for leaded solder devices. Following the RoHS directive, we found lead free rework much
more demanding. At the same time we were being asked to assemble much larger boards, some of them very thick substrates with up to 24 layers.”

“Clearly, we needed a really heavy duty rework station, and we saw the Ersa IR650 on the Blundell stand at Nepcon” Steve Parks continues. “The 600 x 600mm board size capability and the powerful yet very controllable Dynamic IR heating were exactly
what we were looking for”.

“The installation went well and a good level of training was provided by Blundells’ specialist engineer, Derek Painter.” Recently, Cemgraft became part of the AWS
Group, and following the successful installation, they intend to standardise on the equipment throughout the Group.