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

No One Knows More About Preheating PCB's Than Zephyrtronics!
ZT-1 HIS PRE-HEATING AIRBATH™ SYSTEMS
Bottom-Side Convection PCB Pre-Heat: Thru-Hole, SMD, SMT, QFN & BGA Rework & Repair. Our Heavy Industrial Series!

Effective, Powerful 800 Watts With 25 CFM AIR SUPPLY (710 Liters per Minute)

Zephyrtronics' AirBath “bathes the circuit board in warm air to reduce thermal stresses
to the board and its components.”-- NASA Report, January 9, 2004

Internationally acclaimed, award-winning and patent-protected, the ZT-1-HIS (Heavy Industrial) AirBath™ preheat systems are the effective solution for preheating PCB's during low-volume prototyping or in rework.

Two Models!  Our ZT-1-HIS AirBaths™ are available in with either analog or digital control. Both models have a powerful 25 CFM (710 Liters/Minute) of air supply. With our greater volume of air supply, you can pre-heat at far lower temps than with other ineffective preheating devices limited by low air volume outputs, which require higher temps and that burn your boards. Not a "preheating toy," this is a 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!

Chosen By Boeing for the
International Space Station Project.

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 SMD packages such as BGA, CSP, QFP, QFN, TSOP, PLCC, SOIC, SOL, LCC, Flip Chip and Glob Top components. Still, the AirBath  is not limited to only SMD devices: Don't overlook the superb benefit the AirBath  preheating boost brings to your tough through-hole (PTH) soldering and de-soldering tasks! Plus, it easily handles all substrates including FR-4, polyimide, composites, flex circuits and ceramic boards.

The Many Benefits of Preheating Your PCB: The benefits of preheat are multiple and compounding. 1.) Preheating or "soaking" the assembly before reflow activates the flux that removes oxides and surface films thereby enhancing the wetting process and solder joint quality. 2.) Preheat permits lower soldering reflow temperatures. 3.) Preheat reduces "dwell time" at the final reflow stage. 4.) Preheat reduces thermal stresses to the PC substrate and components if localized reflow is made with soldering irons, de-soldering tools or hot air tools. 5.) Preheat gives a thermal boost for  RoHS lead-free solders without damaging the work!

Model ZT-1-HIS-DPU
 Features Digital  Temp Display With Temp Set & Read Functions  on Front Panel.

Model ZT-1-HIS-MIL Features the 2 Most Common Preheat Temps: 100°C & 150°C By Rocker Switch.

Your Lead-Free Solution: Working with lead-free, RoHS solder alloys --- all have higher melting points --- makes preheat essential to PCB work at a bench. Don't raise temperatures higher on your soldering irons, desoldering tools, hot air tools or thermal tweezers! If you just briefly preheat the bottom  of your PCB before reflow, can perform your soldering or desoldering on the top side of the board at traditional, lower temperatures.

Remove Chip Quickly Below 150°C with  AirBath™ & LOWMELT® "Never Lift A Pad"

Preheating at the Bench Duplicates the Quality
 Thermal Profiles of
High Volume Production

Thru-Hole Desoldering Is Easier & At Lower Temps With AirBath™ Preheat. Heavy Ground Planes? No Problem!

100% Non Contact SMT Hot Air Soldering With the AirBath™ &
a Hot AirPencil™.
 Highest Quality Joints.

AirBath™ Preheat
Compliments the
 ZT-7-MIL SMD/BGA Station Perfectly.

 Ideal For Heat Shrink Tubing Applications.
Superior To Non-Regulated Heat Guns!

Preheating PC Boards falls into four categories: hot plates, ovens, IR systems and forced convection (warm air). The short video at the right compares all four methods. While any preheat of your PCB prior to solder reflow is better than none, an objective analysis of the various methods of preheating reveals that all preheating methods are not equally effective or beneficial:

1.) The Oven: Using ovens to pre-heat a PCB before rework, soldering, removing or replacing components can yield the most uniform temperature profile as it warms the board's top and bottom like high volume conveyor ovens and wave solder machines. It's just a wee bit problematic to crawl inside an oven with your PCB to preheat while you perform selective soldering or desoldering tasks on one side of the board. Of course, one could preheat a PCB within an oven, and then afterward, rush it back to your bench, but it's hardly practical solution either.

2.) The IR Preheater: There are many drawbacks to infrared which is why it has really never completely caught on.  Some of drawbacks (enumerated in articles and white papers at electronic conventions) are the difficulty in ramping temps (some are better than others) and shadowing caused by high profile devices on PCB's. If the IR preheat grid is very large, it makes working on small PCB's very uncomfortable for a technician (a very common complaint).

Another quality disadvantage of IR preheaters is they cannot ever truly be "temperature controlled" without to taping an external thermocouple onto each board before working on it. This is a hassle and headache for the technician and filled with quality pitfalls, especially inconsistent results. There are more drawbacks, but these are some of the worst.

NASA & JPL: 'IR Preheaters Are Risky': Addressing the preheating rework process for heat sensitive chips in a 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."

Citing the late William Scheu, the authors point to the superiority of preheating by bottom-side forced convection systems. 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" Aug.'05

Post-Cooling™ Mode Cools Down BGA's After Reflow Within 8 Seconds Allowing Quicker Lifting Hot Air Nozzles Preventing Bridges

The  AirBaths™ Established
the Standard for PCB Preheating.

Our AirBaths™ inspired a lot of cheesy imitations which are little more than hair dryers in a box, but we're still the pioneers who understand thermodynamics and preheat better than anyone else.  Our AirBaths™ are the intelligent solution to stop burning up your PCB's by preventing thermal degradation, thermal  shock, lifted pads or traces, substrate delamination, measling and warping.

It is no wonder for nearly twenty years, these Zephyrtronics AirBaths™ have been the pre-heater of choice by most major aerospace and semiconductor manufacturers. It truly is the one single tool that belongs on every bench.  This is the "Science of Zephyrtronics."  We have an AirBath™ for you.