maintenance

On November 15 1990 President George Bush signed the Clean Air Act into law, legally restricting the output of selected air pollutants by cities and industry. The Act addresses multiple sources and types of air pollution, but for the purposes of this discussion, we will deal with the “VOC” [volatile organic compound] component of “ground level ozone”, resulting from the material choices and methods used in Printed Board fabrication. “Ground-level ozone (O3) is the major component of smog. Ozone is not emitted directly into the air, but is formed through complex chemical reactions between precursor emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the presence of sunlight.”

A simplified schematic of the reaction follows:

The shop is swamped and orders are pouring in. There just isn’t any time to clean the equipment or scrub a tank — right? WRONG — a critical mistake made by some PCB manufacturers is to wait until a process is out of control rather than perform regular preventive maintenance (PM) procedures throughout their operations.