What is a "Secondary Operation" for PCB Production? A serious bottleneck for soldering 'mixed assembly' PCB’s is where most of your devices are SMD's -- but still a thru-hole connector needs to be soldered. In such cases, the thru-hole devices are soldered “off-line” in secondary operations. The patented ZT-6-MIL AirFoutain  is your solution!

The most common “off-line” selective soldering approaches are with a.) hand soldering which is costly and time-consuming with unpredictable results from technician to technician; or b.) with either “solder dipping” or “solder dragging” in hot pots or fountains of molten metal where a PCB must be masked and where the risk of solder bridging or spilling is common; or where pin lengths is limiting. Further, maintaining precision solder fountain heights is maddening, not to mention the thankless job of perpetually cleaning away dross from these devices!

A Clean & Rapid Solution for Thru-Hole Soldering Operations: The ZT-6-MIL AirFountain®  provides simultaneous reflow of hundreds of thru-hole pins or leads in less than one single minute. The entire process non-contact and clean because soldering is achieved by selectively applied gentle forced-convection (hot air) from below (See illustrated flow charts). Best of all, you can exceed the requirements of IPC Standard B-610 with regards to 75% fill and pin coverage with 100% solder fill with fillets on both sides!

The ZT-6-MIL AirFountain® targets its temperature controlled, clean, forced-convection exactly where you need it...selectively! And de-Soldering never was this easy or fast. And the ZT-6 AirFountain®  is not a smelly, dirty and dross filled old-fashioned solder fountain. It is clean!

The ZT-6-MIL is loaded with many premium features including digital closed loop, microprocessor temperature control with set/read functions and an easy-to-operate, digital count-down timer with audible beeping to insure tight process control. Moreover, the ZT-6-MIL features its own internal air supply so no hoses, fittings, compressed air, or hook-ups are required. This remarkable production machine can be readily used at the production floor, the test lab, on a remote site or an engineer’s desk.

The construction of the ZT-6-MIL is ESD Safe and is assembled within a durable, yet lightweight steel casing. The ZT-6-MIL AirFountain® is also MIL-Spec compliant and is currently being used by the U.S. Department of Defense in applications ranging from high reliability (aerospace and military concerns) to commercial (consumer product and appliance manufacturing). Unlike older methods such as messy solder-pot-dipping, time-consuming hand-soldering and problematic desoldering operations, the ZT-6-MIL, with its clean, non-contact convective reflow, makes thru-hole connector work, secondary operations, and even rework a breeze!

A Brief History: The ZT-6-MIL AirFountain®  was originally developed to address problems with the required secondary operations for a difficult SMT PCB's that had a 4-row thru-hole connector with 104 gold pins where solder must never touch the gold pins. This made hand-soldering impossible due to the difficulty of reaching within 4 rows of pins and of avoiding contaminating the gold pins with solder. Say hello to the Zephyrtronics ZT-6-MIL that reflows hundreds of connector pins in seconds simultaneously good enough for space applications! So, why doesn't your lab or shop not have one?