Environmental Efforts
The mission of FCT Companies has changed in the past year to include the development and promotion of environmentally friendly and innovative products. Each company has started to do this in it’s own way and we will continually strive for greater sales of these environmentally friendly products in the near future.
Florida CirTech is currently engaged in promoting three types of green products in the PCB bare board industry:
Sn 100 lead free solder bar for Lead Free Hot Air leveling (LF-HASL)
Florida CirTech has been actively engaged in converting many pcb shops in North America from the Eutectic 63/37 solder used in Hot Air Levelling (HAL) to the Sn100 LF-HASL process. The LF-HASL process is now ROHS complaint. The conversions has gone over well and we expect this business to grow not only with the bare board shops but at the OEM level as well. We recently wrote an article on the process in the February issue of Circuitree.
Genesis VOC free imaging products
Florida CirTech recently acquired Genesis Materials Technology, a company that manufacturers VOC-free waterborne imaging products. The imaging products include a high resolution liquid photoresist. A large bare board shop will typically use a liquid photoresist for coating their inner layers. These liquid photoresists contain around 25% organic solvents that are evaporated prior to the imaging process in what is known as a tack dry. In the Genesis photoresist, a patented formulation is used to enable Genesis to replace this organic solvent with water thereby rending this product VOC-free. The Liquid PhotoImageable (LPI) solder masks and legend inks are use water as the solvent and are also VOC-free.
VOC free photoresist strippers
A conventional dry film or photoresist is stripped by orangic containing alkali materials such as Monoethanol Amine (MEA), Choline and TetraMethyl Ammonium Hydroxide (TMAH). Florida CirTech has come up with a series of new products that strip a photoresist on inner layers and which do not attack the underlying copper surface. These products also have overcome the challenge of particle size that have plagued VOC-strippers in the past.
FCT Assembly is the first North American approved licensee of Nihon Superior’s Sn100 lead free solder. This solder is used in wave soldering and rework and is getting increasing acceptance in surface mount technology as well. This product is lead free and is ROHS complaint. In addition, there are many advantages this product has over conventional SAC (Tin-Silver-Copper) lead free alloys. In addition to promoting this product to the assembly industry, FCT Assembly has also successfully persuaded and assisted many major OEM’s in making the lead free transition as painless as possible. With our license expanded to include China, we anticipate this product to growth nicely in the short and long term.
FCT Water is a company that is involved in selling waste treatment chemicals such as precipitants, coagulants and flocculants to aid in the precipitation of hazardous metals such as Lead, Copper and Nickel. FCT Water is involved in developing precipitants which minimize sludge that is buried underground and minimizing the burden plating companies have on landfill. In contrast to the commercially popular DTC (DiThiocarbamate) which is a known biocide, FCT Water has been involved in developing an array of technologies which do not use DTC but alternative sulfide technologies. FCT Water will continue developing products which not only treat chelated and complexed metals in waste water streams but do so in an environmentally friendly way.
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