How to Achieve The Sweet Spot for Acrylic Coating

Thickness
So youve bought your conformal coating machines and wrote your first programs to teach the
software program to tell the hardware and mechanical parts of it how and where to spray the
board. Youve got the right mix and amount of spray coming out of your high speed fluid
dispenser to apply quality patterns of coating to your PCBs, too. You get your conformal coating
PCB test article ready for them to review. The time comes, and they look over it for you-although theyre impressed with the quality of the coating, they inform you its too thick in some
areas and too thin in others.
Thats a situation youll want to avoid, and if you are a technician, engineer or other professional
teaching points to a coating machine program to coat your circuit card assemblies, you need to
be ever vigilant about conformal coat thickness. This article will discuss methods to ensure that
you get the proper thickness during development of the coating program using acrylic coating in
your machines, and how to test the completed product to make sure it is compliant to
specifications.

Standards for Conformal Coat Thickness

The most popular conformal coatings used in industry today are Humiseal 1B31 and MG
Chemicals 419C The material is relatively cheap, easy to use and provide excellent moisture
protection. There are industry standards for conformal coat thickness for acrylics and when
adhering to IPC-610, type AR conformal coatings, and the thickness should be in between .002
and .005. MIL-I-46058C indicates that the thickness should be .002 +/- .001. Most
manufacturers aim between about .002 to .003, and meeting that guideline will ensure that you
stay within the two major thresholds of the two major specifications called out in the standard.

When calibrating the conformal coating machine, the finished substrate should meet these
thicknesses, and the standard should be in the companys product specification sheet, so that
everyone involved in the process knows what the standard is expected to be. If the standard
thickness is not met, then this could lead to failure of what the coating is trying to protect on the
final PCB--especially when trying to prevent moisture ingress on it.
Coating machines can meet this standard easily if the PCB requirements and the type of
machine are correctly matched. Then it is up to the machine programmer to get that pattern
and amount of passes correct that spray the PCB to ensure that the substrate has the correct
thickness on the finished product. Improper thickness is usually caused by too many passes
programmed into the coordinate software program, or on the other end of the spectrum-- there
may not be enough passes--resulting in conformal coat thickness falling under specification.
In these cases, the program would need to be tweaked a little by the developer to have it fall
back into the range of the standard without any deviation once it is complete. During these
processes there are measuring methods to gauge the thickness of the conformal coating using
a manual process or testing equipment.

Coating Thickness Measuring Techniques

Its vital that the coating thickness is met, and that internal and international standards no matter
what conformal coat equipment you use. You can accomplish getting this process in control by
using methods to measure the coating and calibrate your process as needed based on the
results. Theres several tools out there for measuring the thickness during the application, and
they fall into two basic categories: dry and wet film measurements.

Dry Coating Thickness Measurement

Conformal coating for PCB dry film measurements are made after the coating dries enough for
any contact made with the coating, so that any contact made during the process wont damage
the coating. For this method, measurements are taken on unencumbered, flat and cured surface
of a PCB, or on a coupon processed with the part.
Test coupons are used quite often in industry to measure coating and it is easy and relatively
inexpensive to do. The coupons also provide a record for the quality assurance department to
look over to make sure the coating characteristics and parameters are up to par with the
specifications and can be sprayed the same time that the PCBs are.
One way to spray coating to test involves procuring some coupons made up of nonporous
material, such as glass or metal. Glass slides that are like the ones you used in biology or
chemistry work really well for this. Test coupons made out of the same material that the PCB
you are spraying usually work the best. The sticky dot method works really well, too. Identify
the areas you want to take a measurement and measure it with micrometers or an indicator
thats accurate to 12.5+_2.5m on, and begin the test by spraying it with the acrylic material.
Let the area dry and take measurements of the area again. The difference between the
beginning and end measurements will be your record for thickness. Write these measurements

down in a standardized record that shows proof that thickness was calibrated before beginning
a run of production. Periodically run other tests during the run to ensure the process is staying in
control.
Another dry method that is used frequently is testing equipment that utilizes eddy currents to
test conformal coat thickness. It is a little more expensive, but involves a non-contact technique.
The measurements involve lightly placing a test probe head on the surface of the coating to get
an almost instantaneous readout. This method is one you may want to invest in if the volume is
high for the amount of PCBs being produced on conformal coating printed circuit boards. The
measurement devices are extremely accurate, up to thin films of 25-50 um and 1 um for a
device such as the Positestor 6000, and are also recommended for high volume because they
are also very quick to display measurement readings.
Wet Film Conformal Coating Measurement
This method involves using a wet film gauge to measure the coating while its still wet, and it
allows operators to test and help accomplish quality assurance before the coating dries.
There are advantages to using this method. For one thing, applying to much conformal coating
costs your business a lot of money, and its also useful for conformal coating processes where
dry coating thickness can only be measured by using destructive methods.
How to do it: the wet film gauge is placed into the wet conformal coating after application until
the teeth of it contacts the substrate or surface of the components measured. There are
measurements on the gauge that indicate how thick the coating is. Count the measurement line
that the conformal coating has risen to. You will be able to tell the dry film coating thickness by
calculating it from measurement s derived from the solid resin content of the coating on the
PCB.
Image courtesy of Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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