One of our clients who produces automated test and assembly equipment for the automotive parts industry contacted me recently with a problem. Their recent project was an automated soldering station. The machine was designed to solder wire leads onto contacts for a motor assembly. The machine worked well at reasonably slow paces. However, when they made efforts to speed up the cycle time, they found they needed to put more heat into the part in a shorter duration of time in order to achieve the desired result for the solder joint. The problem that resulted was the soldering process was imparting too much heat into the connector assembly.
After reviewing the application with our customer, we determined there were two points within the machine that needed to be cooled during each cycle in order to keep the heat from building up in the parts. Given the high heat condition and the short available time for cooling, we opted to go for two of the High Power Cold Guns to blast the part immediately after the heating process for soldering took place. Before the High Power Cold Gun solution was applied, the assembly was climbing to 150C which did not bode well for longevity of the connected components. After the installation of the High Power Cold Guns, the customer was able to have a respectable 30C finishing temperature on the parts before they exited the machine.
The quality issue was more than handled by the cooling capability of the High Power Cold Guns which allowed the customer to continue with their plan to increase productivity with the machine without having any adverse effect due to heat penetrating into the parts. The High Power Cold Guns were controlled by way of solenoid valves to produce the cooling power instantly only at the end of the cycle.
Do you have an automatic or semi-automatic process that could benefit from localized cooling similar to this example? If so, EXAIR has a whole range of Vortex Tube and Spot Cooling Products that can be adjusted to fit your need within the application.
Neal Raker, International Sales Manager
Email: nealraker@exair.com
Twitter: @EXAIR_NR