HumiSeal to showcase new products and service announcements at SMT Nuremberg

Leading manufacturer of conformal coatings solutions, HumiSeal^® has announced that it will use the SMT Hybrid Packaging event in Nuremberg (5th – 7th May 2009) to showcase a number of product and service enhancements. The company has made significant developments in recent months with the extension of its now well established UV40 range as well as the introduction of gel based conformal coating products for use in sensitive areas with connectors and other ‘keep out’ areas. The company has also recently announced over $1 million investment in R&D and compatibility testing facilities and is keen to highlight to visitors to their stand (9-451) the advantages that these announcements can offer as well as details of the recent approval of HumiSeal products by German automotive giant BMW.

The highly successful UV40 product has been expanded to include:

• UV40-HV - A high viscosity version of the standard UV40 product supplied in 55cc syringes for automatic application onto small, high-density, fine line printed circuit boards synonymous in mobile phone and PDA applications where precision selective coating is crucial
• UV40-Solar has been specifically formulated for photovoltaic (PV) applications with enhanced UV stability so that it does not discolour or degrade over time
• UV40-250 is designed to meet the requirements of the demanding automotive industry, primarily for the harsh conditions and extreme thermal cycling to which the coatings are continually exposed. Automotive giant, BMW, has given its approval to this product recognising its unique properties

Other innovations that will be on show in Nuremberg include:

• Information on compatibility testing for customers following a significant $1million investment in its research and development capabilities. The company’s two laboratories based in Taunton, Massachusetts USA and Camberley, Surrey UK will help secure the ongoing development of next generation coating chemistries as well as strengthening the customer support offering.
• Details on the approval of UV40250 and 1C49LV conformal coatings by BMW

David Greenman, managing director for HumiSeal Europe, commented:
“We are going through some challenging times and it is vital that we are able to stay ahead of emerging technologies in this dynamic industry to ensure we can offer our customers a real competitive edge. Our investment in new technology and product research means that we can offer real solutions from across the chemistry spectrum ensuring we continue to supply conformal coatings aligned with modern manufacturing technology and products”.

Leading manufacturer of conformal coatings solutions, HumiSeal continues to establish its position with the announcement that it has developed and introduced a gel version of its highly successful UV40. The company has also announced that following successful application throughout Europe, it will be making its gel version of the acrylic based 1B31 and urethane based 1A33 coatings available to US and Asian customers. These thixatropic versions of existing products lend themselves to applications that require avoiding ‘keep out’ areas on assemblies during selective conformal coating application, as well as sealing connectors to prevent ingress of coating material.

UV40 gel has been specifically formulated for some specialist large scale LED (light emitting diode) applications. One such application is the massive LED displays that can often be seen above stadiums during sporting events. The displays are carried on hot air balloons or blimps where exposure to the elements is severe and yet weight remains an issue. Manufacturers realised that a light weight alternative to hermetically sealed housings was needed for the electronic circuitry but it had to be robust enough to withstand the rigours of extremes in UV exposure, lightening strikes and moisture ingress from rain. UV40 gel is applied in conjunction with standard UV40 product around sensitive areas of the circuit board to increase the thickness of covering. This can be as thick as 1mm, nearly ten times the normal thickness of a conformal coating.

1B31 and 1A33 gels has been engineered to ensure that they do not flow from the point of dispense, a property that some manufacturers find crucial in today’s environment of high board density and reduced real estate. The product has already been successfully used throughout Europe by manufacturers across the industry. The product is lends itself to automated selective coating applications but can also be used manually where necessary. Customers using this gel version have been able to reliably coat components whilst simultaneously avoiding sensitive keep out areas such as connectors.

Phil Kinner, business director for HumiSeal, commented on these new gels:
“Ensuring that conformal coating materials are only deposited where required whilst avoiding other more sensitive areas is becoming increasingly more difficult as technology allows us to design smaller and more densely populated assemblies. By introducing these gel products to the market we can help customers meet reliability and performance targets for the life of the product. The application on the blimps means that the customer now can remove the need for heavy weatherproof housings without compromising performance. These products also allow customers to deploy dam and fill coating techniques around selected components by building a dam of the gel product around the device and then filling with standard conformal coating product”.

Manufactured and available globally, HumiSeal’s range of gel products are the result of its ongoing work in continuously improve and develop sector-specific products that reflect its clients’ needs in a real and competitive world.

HumiSeal, the leading conformal coatings solutions provider for the protection of printed circuit boards and electronic assemblies, has announced that it has seen a significant growth in sales of its award winning UV40 conformal coating to OEMs and CEMs operating in the mobile phone manufacturing sector. The demand for products in this sector is linked to problems associated with implementing lead-free solder products in increasingly smaller and more complex product builds.

Today’s mobile phones are getting smaller and more compact whilst simultaneously offering increased functionality and technology. The introduction of lead-free solder products to the manufacturing process, although not new, is now highlighting new challenges as the higher process temperatures and different physical attributes of the solder manifest themselves in the high-density boards of today.

The special high viscosity version of UV40 (UV40-HV) was developed specifically for the telecoms sector following requests for solutions by a number of HumiSeal’s customers. Issues such as increased contaminants in the high temperature fluxes used were becoming problematic to the reliability of the finished products and a long-term solution was needed. HumiSeal UV40-HV is easy to process and won’t “crack” under thermal cycling, offering manufacturers a genuine solution with none of the problems normally associated with UV curable materials.

Marie Kaing, chief chemist at HumiSeal Europe, explained why the higher viscosity was so important:

“The reason that we developed a higher viscosity version (standard viscosity is 500cPs) of UV40 was to suit the different valve technology used in this particular type of application. As the board design is much smaller and component density much higher, the technology needed to apply UV40HV is a jetting technology which enables us to coat very precise areas as opposed to standard selective coating valve technology”. For the first time, high volume users in fields such as mobile telecoms, automotive and consumer electronics can now gain access to the popular UV curable coating class with its rapid cure speed, level of processing ease and thermal cycling resistance, never before achieved.

“We are very proud of the performance we have managed to achieve with this new product family,” comments Kaing, who was one of the technical driving forces behind the development of HumiSeal UV40-HV. “We knew what we wanted to achieve with this UV curable material, but at times our laboratory trials made us uncertain that we could achieve it,” she continues. “It was almost like aiming for a light at the end of a tunnel that you could never reach, no matter how hard you tried.” HumiSeal Europe persevered and by careful polymer engineering, from first principles, it succeeded in its quest by developing what can be summarised chemically as a polyurethane-polyacrylate hybrid UV curable polymer structure. This yields a macroscopic materials performance that, incredibly, is not dissimilar to the ease-of-processing and thermal cycling resistance offered by other established chemical coating material types such as the HumiSeal water-based ranges.

David Greenman, managing director at HumiSeal Europe added: “The success of UV40-HV can be directly attributed to working in partnership with our customers. By listening and understanding their needs and concerns we can be sure that we develop products that are able to fully meet the performance criteria. HumiSeal has over 50 years’ experience in the conformal coating industry and I believe we are the only truly independent manufacturer in terms of coating chemistries. This gives us a huge advantage when it comes to developing bespoke products”.

Military certification for HumiSeal’s UV40 range

Leading vendor of conformal coating solutions, HumiSeal®, has announced that it has successfully achieved MIL-I-46058 certification for its UV curing products UV40 and UV40LV. This latest round of certification means that the company now offers the widest range of Military and UL (Underwriters Laboratories) certified products in the industry across all of the chemistry types.

Conformal coatings have been used for decades to protect high-reliability electronic assemblies from hostile environments, guaranteeing faultless performance in critical situations where failure can be extremely expensive or worse, cost lives. Given their importance, conformal coatings must be selected and their characteristics matched carefully to the applications for which they will be used. Thus vendors supply information on numerous product performance parameters according to industry protocols such as the exacting IPC-CC-830 standards. The problem with such protocols is that vendors test their own products and report the results, with no independent verification of the test methods, results or presentation of those results. Thus claims may be made that can associate materials with certain standards.

Phrases such as “meets the requirements of”, “approved to”, or “meets or exceeds” can be misleading, and in certain circumstances, extremely dangerous. For these reasons, in-house testing, no matter how good it is, can be unacceptable for some sectors. Qualification to the MIL-I-46058C specification, for example, is obligatory for critical defence and aerospace applications. Among the most stringent conformal coating performance qualifications in the industry, MIL specification tests are conducted by an independent laboratory using known, verified methods. The results are unequivocal and completely independent of commercial pressures, and products are graded to clear standards that guarantee their quality, reliability and performance.

Where MIL specifications certify product performance, UL specify equally stringent independent test procedures to certify finished assembly product safety. By using and documenting the use of UL approved materials throughout assembly, manufacturers negate the need for expensive final product testing to guarantee conformity to North American safety requirements. A leader in US equipment safety and certification, UL is one of the world’s best recognised independent conformity assessment providers. With its latest certifications for the UV40 range, Humiseal now offers no less than 16 MIL specified products, as well as the industry’s largest range of products with both MIL-I-46058C and UL-746E accreditation.

Phil Kinner, HumiSeal Europe’s Sales and Technical Manager explains why this is so important:
“Many of our key clients are active in the aerospace and defence industries, so MIL spec certification, which is the highest independent product performance qualification we can offer, is a must. In the same way, UL recognition guarantees our products’ safety in use and clears the way for their use in the US and other equally demanding marketplaces”. The benefits to HumiSeal’s broader client base is clear: “Companies that are active not only in the defence and aerospace sectors, but also in the automotive, consumer goods, white goods, industrial control, transport and display panel industries – sectors that would not typically specify MIL specs – can rest assured knowing that their electronic systems are protected by the highest quality and performance, materials available. This is because our products’ performance and safety are guaranteed not only by our five decades of experience in supplying conformal coatings, but also by the highest independent authorities”, says Kinner. The latest accreditation looks set to give a further boost to sales of HumiSeal’s UV curing range. “We are delighted with the market’s reaction to UV40”, says Kinner. “Following its launch just 18 months ago, sales have exceeded all of our expectations. Today, it is being used by many of the world’s leading manufacturers of automotive systems, consumer electronics and white goods. The MIL-I-46058C accreditation will serve to underscore its capabilities still further, and this, together with its existing UL-746E accreditation, will make it ideal for many new sectors including critical defence and aerospace applications”. The UV40 range and this latest accreditation are testimony to HumiSeal’s continual search for excellence. With 50 years of experience and expertise in conformal coatings, the company has always focused carefully on its customers’ needs, working with them to develop the most complete and widely qualified range of conformal coating solutions in the industry.