Extracting dusts in electronic production

Customer:	Schmersal
Extracted material:	Soldering fumes, circuit board dusts
Industry:	General industry
Vacuum cleaner:	Ruwac DS 1222

The Schmersal Group, headquartered in Wuppertal, is a global market leader in the challenging machine safety sector. It offers a very broad range of safety equipment and systems, in over 10,000 series and variations.

Problem

Schmersal's vertical integration is outstanding. Electronics are also produced in-house, making up a majority of the operating materials. One example of this is suction on the cutting stations of a manufacturing island used to manually process and solder SMD circuit boards. The overall circuit boards are cut manually here on two systems because quantities are low, making automated cutting less economically efficient. The operating technicians needed to design an extraction system for this station.

Solution

A mobile extraction system connected to both cutting systems collects the dust directly at the site of creation. The company uses a type DS 1222 Ruwac “quiet-running vacuum” to handle the job. It is located a few metres away from the manufacturing island and connected to both suction units on the cutting tools via a suction line distributor and suction air controller, which were also designed and installed in-house.

This solution conforms to the regulations for “Extracting circuit board dusts”. The vacuum cleaner is equipped with a remote activation feature, meaning it switches on automatically when the cutting system is turned on.

The advantages of the “semi-mobile” vacuum cleaner include its quiet operation, its ability to integrate into the overall system, and its flexibility in placement.