Blundell Blog

A new 14 zone convection reflow oven for soldering surface mounted components is now available. Optimum control of the airflow ensures stable, uniform distribution of heat and helps to keep energy costs low. Differences in thermal mass of the PCB’s being processed have no effect on the heating profile due to the low mass design of the oven interior.

The Iemme ’PLUS 14′ is now available from Blundells, and is very competitively priced. It has built in cooling and comes with a choice of mesh conveyor or pin edge conveyor (or both) so it can be used in line or as a stand alone oven.

For more information, call us on 02476 210270 or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk

For best results when cleaning solder paste from screens and stencils, the Blundell Crystal Clean 960S Screen and Stencil Cleaning machine is highly recommended.

It cleans framed or unframed stencils up to 29 inches square (740 x 740mm) and is suitable for apertures down to 0.3mm. The system uses compressed air to jet the cleaning fluid through the stencil apertures in a timed cleaning cycle lasting between 8 and 10 minutes.

Each cycle uses just 300ml of stencil cleaning solvent which is filtered and recirculated in the wash chamber. A fast drying cycle follows. The machine is supplied with a special holding frame for cleaning mis-printed boards.

Two 960S machines have recently been installed at Honeywell Controls in Newhouse, Scotland, and their production engineering manager Pat Johnstone is extremely pleased with the cleaning results.

A demonstration machine is available for trials at Blundell Production Equipment’s facility in Coventry.

For more information contact us on 02476 210270 or or email us at  sales@blundell.co.uk.

An investment in a solder recovery system to reclaim solder dross is one of the fastest ways to save money in electronics assembly. 

The Blundell Soldabac costs only just over £5,000 yet it reclaims at least 50% of reusable lead free solder alloy from the dross that is scraped off the solder bath. In most cases the Soldabac pays for itself in 6 to 12 months.

Solder recovery is also an environmentally freindly activity and so it qualifies for additional capital allowance tax relief.  

For more information contact Paul or Neil Blundell on 02476 210270 or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk

If you assemble prototype PCB’s or batches of one or two circuit boards, it is usually not economic to program an automatic placement machine to do this kind of small batchwork.

Fritsch SMT of Germany have long been producing manual and semi automatic surface mount placement assembly workstations. They were one of the first to be involved in this specialised field in the early 1980’s.

As sole UK distributor for the Fritsch range we at Blundell can install modular manual SMT workstations. You can start with a basic system and progress to a more automated station which guides the operator to the placement position.

Components can be fed in tapes or bulk fed in bins, tubes or waffle trays. It is the ideal component assembly solution for small production runs, prototypes or one-offs. For more information call us on 02476 210270 or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk

Hand soldering is still widely practised in printed circuit board assembly.  There are always some components that cannot be wave soldered, and even automatic selective soldering machines have their limitations. 

Modern soldering irons need to be ultra-slim for comfortable operation yet need to be extremely powerful and responsive for lead free applications.

The Ersa ”I-Con” provides the perfect combination of power and comfort. It has an ultra slim handpiece measuring just 169mm from tip to end, and yet has a powerful 150 watt heating element and recovers from standby to full temperature in just 3 seconds. 

It also boasts features like a motion sensor to automatically switch it to standby when not in use, password protection, process window alarm and it can be programmed via a USB memory stick. The i-Con is currently on special offer from Blundell.

For more information or a demonstration call Keith Gummer on 07770 615405 or Paul Cooper on 07880 546380.

Or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk.

A clever device for printed circuit board repair and component removal. The Ersa Hybrid Rework station and it’s smaller sister the hand held Hybrid Tool are sold and supported in the UK by ourselves at Blundell Production Equipment. www.blundell.co.uk

The two options are a complete competitively priced workstation for PCB repair, and a lower cost hand held rework device based on the same technology.

The Hybrid station is designed to replace outdated, uncontrolled hot air guns, which are still commonplace in electronics factories. These old systems lack repeatability, and can damage the boards and components.

The Ersa Hybrid system uses safe IR heating combined with regulated hot air to deliver a controlled temperature ramp of up to 4 degrees per second to gently remove small and meduim sized surface mounted devices (SMD’s).

An integral vacuum pen is supplied to help remove the components once the solder has reached liquidous.

Visit our Website and click on the SMT & BGA REWORK section and look up Ersa Hybrid Rework Station and Tool. Or call Keith Gummer on 07770 615405 or Paul Cooper on 07880 546380

An excellent range of  Humidity Controlled Dry Storage Cabinets for storage of components and electronic assemblies is available from Blundells (www.blundell.co.uk). 

Most electronics companies are now fully aware that failure to store sensitive electronic devices properly can result  in expensive rework due to soldering defects, and  in premature device failure in the field. The IPC JEDEC J-STD-033B standard has been adopted by most major electronics manufacturers.

Our X-Treme series low humidity cabinets provide safe, controlled storage of electronic devices and can be used for drying, dehumidifying and safe preservation of components, assemblies, PCB’s and any sensitive electronic parts.

In each cabinet there is a built in data logger which records the relative humidity in real time, and logs each door opening event and how long it lasts. This cabinet really stands out as being stylishly designed and also highly efficient.

For more information call Paul Cooper on 02476 210270 or Keith Gummer on 07770 615405 or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk.

Ersa benchtop solder pots are small solder baths for dip soldering and tin dipping and coating of component leads, wire braids and cable terminations.  

They have side mounted ceramic heating elements thermally insulated from the external metal housing for safety. They can be switched to half power operation when not in constant use. Each pot has its own temperature regulator.

For more information contact Keith Gummer on 07770 615405 or Paul Cooper on 07880 150864, or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk

Back in 2005 we installed 2 Ebso SPA 400 selective soldering machines at Ultra Electronics Manufacturing facility in Weymouth where they have been used on a wide range of contract manufactuing tasks.

When Ultra recently opened a new high technology engineering and production hub in Sawston, Cambridge, they once again specified an EBSO 400 for the new production facility there. The machine was installed in April 2010.

The Cambridge site is dedicated to high competence rapid prototype electronic assembly and the Ebso machine is very well suited to this kind of work. Providing SMT and through-hole PCB assembly as well as full system assembly, the operation at Sawston features 2 SMT lines, AOI and flying probe and functional testing capabilities.

Ebso machines are supplied and serviced in the UK exclusively by Blundell Production Equipment. For more information contact Paul Blundell on 02476 210276.

A new iPulse M6ex assembly machine for PCB surface mount component placement has been ordered by Leicestershire based customer information display manufacturer Infotec Ltd.  

The M6ex has recently launched by i-Pulse to replace the mid range M4 machine which has been very popular in the UK over the past couple of years. Infotec’s machine has an IPC placement speed of up to 12,500 components per hour for 0603 chips and will assemble QFP’s at the rate of 3,700 per hour.

Infotec is the UK’s market leader in the design and manufacture of electronic displays to the transport industry. and has just completed work on a customer information system for the channel tunnel high speed rail link in Kent. The installation comes in advance of the 2012 Olympics when the line will be a key transport link for visitors to the Games.

For more information on the iPulse M6 please contact Nick Clarke on 07786 150864 or email us at sales@blundell.co.uk