Low Static Cleaning – The future of defect reduction

Glasgow based Teknek has released its next generation contact cleaning technology.

After leading the market for over 30 years, its extensive R&D program has resulted in the development of patent pending NT™ cleaning rollers.

Already acknowledged as providing the highest performance cleaning equipment, this innovation allows Teknek to solve even more contamination issues.

NT™ cleaning rollers are unique. They offer all the cleaning power of Teknek rollers with the added advantage of being static dissipating.  With surface resistance of 1 x 107 Ω, used within the Teknek machine static levels remain well below 100 volts compared with over 3,000 volts or more in other systems.  Not only does this allow cleaning of products which are static sensitive, for example printed circuit boards, materials which are prone to becoming static charged can for the first time be cleaned easily.

To complement the NT™ cleaning rollers, Teknek has also launched its new range of adhesive rolls. GAR (Gold Adhesive Roll) provides the same high cleaning performance as other Teknek adhesives but like NT, it is static dissipative and a key component of the low static cleaning system.

For the first time ever, boards used in the SMT process can be cleaned in a safe static environment of less than 50 volts. Damage due to ESD and EOS are eliminated. Such is the effectiveness of the system that for most SMT applications Ionisers are not required after cleaning.

The ability to control the static level with the cleaning process allows high speed cleaning of thin films such as those used in Display and FPCB. These films are easily charged whilst moving through the production process. Once highly charged the films have a high tendency to wrap around rollers used in the process, including the cleaning rollers.

Recent introduction of NT & GAR within the high-volume display sector saw reduction in static related quality issues fall from 4% to zero. This not only allowed payback within weeks but increased output.

Moreover, thin materials which have been difficult or impossible to clean with traditional cleaning rollers are easily cleaned with this new technology. Polyimide widely used in the FPCB market is very thin and is easily tribocharged.  Having struggled for many years to process sheets of this material at speed, NT has recently been used to process such at up to 40 metres/min.

Being a global company focused entirely on defect reduction, Teknek has designed these key components-  NT™ cleaning rollers and GAR adhesive rolls - so that they can be fitted into existing Teknek machines as well as those made by others.

Teknek invented the ‘Blue’ cleaning roller many years ago, and many other suppliers have used the same colour for their product’s. To make sure that NT™ cleaning rollers are instantly recognisable Teknek has made NT™ cleaning rollers Black, once again setting the standard.

Black is the new Blue.