Preheaters      SMT, BGA, SMD & Thru-Hole Rework      Bottom-Side Pre-heating      Ramping & Preheating for PCB's

1996 "Vision Award" Awarded to Zephyrtronics for
the AirBath™
 "Best New Product of the Year"

The  AirBath is Spotlighted in Ray Prasad'sText
"Surface Mount Technology"

"Innovative...simpler, safer way to remove and repair sensitive devices" The Editorial Staff, SMT MAGAZINE

The Zephyrtronics' AirBath “bathes the circuit board in warm air to reduce thermal stresses to the board and components.”-- NASA Report Jan '04

Here are our award winning and patent-protected ZT-1-HIS (Heavy Industrial) AirBath™ Pre-heating Systems, your  effective solution for pre-heating PCB assemblies during low-volume or prototyping tasks, and in rework and repair.

Two Models: Digital & Analog!  Our ZT-1-HIS AirBaths™ are available in two popular models: digital or analog. Both models feature a powerful 25 CFM (710 Liters/Minute) of air supply. And because of our greater volume of air supply, you can pre-heat at far lower temps than with other ineffective preheating devices limited by their low air volume outputs and which require higher temps and which will burn your boards. Not an imitative, "preheating toy", this is your preheating tool.

800 Watts of Power: Coupled with our ample air output is our 800 Watts of preheating capacity. This is effective preheating by design!

The ZT-1-HIS AirBath™ Was Chosen By Boeing for the International Space Station Project.

Preheat Power: Our ZT-1-HIS AirBath™ Systems, with a generous and powerful 25 CFM (710 Liters/Minute) of air supply from the AirCone™ delivers its forced-convection preheating power for even the most challenging PCB's. Beware of imitative pre-heaters with less than 13CFM (360 liters/minute) that crudely attempt to compensate for their wimpy air volume through higher temp settings. Remember: the glass transition of a FR-4 PCB is only 170°C. You don't want higher preheat temps, you want a higher volume of safe preheated (100°C to 170°C) air for your PCB's.

Loaded With Premium Features: The ZT-1-HIS AirBaths™ get into all the nooks and crannies of the PCB assembly where hot plates and IR pre-heaters can't go (more below).  It is ESD-safe; features indicator lights (blue: cooling; red: preheating); it is self-contained with an internal air supply (no hookups); all inside a  durable, steel housing for industrial use and long production life.

Critical Thermal Ramping: The ZT-1-HIS AirBaths™ have the industry standard, built-in temperature ramping at 2° to 4°C per second preventing thermal shock to sensitive chips, ceramic caps and glass diodes. The ramp is "built in" by design into every AirBath™ Preheating System. Our ramping was essential to Motorola® and Boeing with their space applications.

The Many Benefits of Preheating Your PCB: The benefits from preheating are multiple and compounding. 1.) Preheating or "soaking" the assembly prior to initiating reflow helps to activate the flux, removing oxides and surface films from the leads and pads to be soldered, thereby enhancing the wetting process and solder joint quality.  2.) Preheating the board permits lower soldering reflow temperatures.  3.) Preheating reduces the final "dwell time" during the final reflow stage.  4.) Preheating reduces thermal stresses to the PCB substrate and its components when localized reflow is made with soldering irons, de-soldering tools and hot air systems. 5.) Preheating provides the thermal boost needed when working with RoHS lead-free solders without damaging the work!

For Thru-Hole, SMT & BGA Preheating Tasks: The HIS Series AirBath Preheating Systems is ideal for all PCB challenges from low-volume production runs, prototyping during design or during rework with all component packages such as BGA, CSP, QFP, QFN, TSOP, PLCC, SOIC, SOL, LCC, Flip Chip and Glob Top components. And it easily handles all substrates including FR-4, polyimide, composites, flex circuits and ceramic boards.

Comparing The 4 Methods of Preheating:

Pre-heating PCB assemblies falls into four categories: Use of hot plates, use of ovens, IR systems, and the use of forced convection (warm air) up under the PCB:. While any preheating of your PCB's prior to solder reflow is certainly better than none, an objective analysis of the various methods of preheating quickly reveals that all preheating methods are not equally effective or beneficial:

1.) The Oven: The use of an oven to pre-heat the substrate before reworking and initiating solder reflow for either removal and/or replacement of components can yield the most uniform temperature profile as it warms both the top and bottom of the PCB assembly as ovens also do in high volume production equipment such as conveyor ovens and wave solder machines. It's just a little problematic to crawl inside an oven with your PCB to preheat while your perform selective soldering or desoldering tasks on one side of the board. Of course, one can preheat in an oven and then race with it in your high-gloved hands back to the bench, but it's hardly a solution either.

2.) The Hot Plate: The obvious limitation to the hot plate is that not all PCB assemblies are single sided. In fact, in today's world of hybrid and mixed technologies, the PCB that is entirely flat or plane on one side is an exotic and rare creature indeed. PCB's typically can carry heat sinks, connectors, jumpers and transformers on both sides of the substrate. These uneven surfaces on the board present an indirect path of heat conduction from the hot plate to the board assembly.

3.) The IR Preheater: There are many drawbacks to IR which is why it really never completely caught on. That is not to say that, as with hot plates, there are some applications that work with IR pre-heaters.  Some of drawbacks which have been enumerated in articles in SMT Magazine, Circuits Assembly and in white papers at electronic conventions are the difficulty in ramping temps (some are better than others); shadowing caused by high profile components on PCB's; and if the IR preheat grid is very large it can make working on small PCB's very uncomfortable for the technician (this is a very common complaint). Still another great disadvantage to IR preheaters is that they can not ever truly be "temperature controlled" without the technician having to always pre-assemble an external thermocouple into every board before working on it. And that's a continuous hassle and headache replete with quality pitfalls and inconsistent results. These are some of the key setbacks to IR.

The Picture Tells the Story:
 A Comparison of Two Popular PCB Preheating Methods

3.) NASA & JPL: 'IR Preheaters Are Risky': Addressing the critical preheating process during rework of plastic and other heat sensitive components in their 49-page published report, two JPL engineers, Dr. Rajenshuni Ramesham and Dr. R. David Gerke, wrote "Hot plates and infrared preheaters are not recommended for this type of rework. The reason that they should not be used is that the thermal reaction times, energy transfer rates and efficiency are never consistent. However, they can be used for large metal and ground-plane boards in limited applications, e.g., where the size of the board matches that of the preheater in area." Continuing and also citing the late William Scheu, the authors pointed out the superiority of preheating by bottom-side forced convection systems. Moreover, the NASA Survey by JPL spotlighted still more of the deficiencies of IR preheating devices: "They have little capacity to ramp and soak to perform properly engineered repair scenarios or to support the creation and application of complicated thermal profiles. They also are limited in their ability to preheat beyond the physical dimensions of the heating surface. Hot-air preheating can be ramped, soaked and, on some systems, synchronized with the reflow process, permitting duplication of the actual profile used in manufacturing the assemblies. BGAs and photoelectrical parts are sensitive to higher temperatures and any attempt to preheat with marginally controllable sources is risky." ---' NASA & JPL: Survey of Rework Methods & Equipment for Various Packaging Technologies." -- August 2005.

4.) Superior, Forced Convection Preheat, The AirBath™:  The market has long spoken with regards to the distinct advantages and superiority of a warm air bath in the pre-heating process. Forced convection completely disregards the topography (or bottomography) of the PCB, allowing immediate, direct access of the warm air into all of the nooks and crannies of the PCB assembly. And much like the newer, popular forced convection commercial ovens, the circulating warmed air is far more effective than static warm air.
 

Zephyrtronics Led and Leads the World in Preheating PCB's: Judged "Best New Product of the Year" and winner of the prestigious "Vision Award" at the Surface Mount International Expo in Silicon Valley in 1996 for its milestone contribution to the global production of printed circuit cards , Zephyrtronics' AirBath™ was recognized and spotlighted by SMT Magazine in 1997 as a "safer and simpler method for removing and repairing sensitive devices."