Automatic Oven Monitoring

1-Click Oven Monitoring

The Footprint concept

• The alternative to frequent profiling and thermal process windows is to monitor the machine drift
• The Footprint system monitors the oven temperature variations along the conveyor
• Conveyor speed is also measured in real-time
• The key decision is to determine allowable versus excessive drift
• The Footprint can make that decision for you by automatically measuring the acceptable drift, and only alert the user when the conditions reach danger level
• Users can also select the basic monitoring mode with no alarms. The Footprint will simply record and display the changing conditions in the oven

Selectable programming modes for oven monitoring and drift limits

1. 1-Click Programming

• a. 1-click to start oven monitoring without alarms
• b. 1-click to start oven monitoring with default alarm setup. In this mode the software looks at the oven drift the recent period of time and sets the alarm accordingly

2. Load the settings of a previous monitoring run
3. Advanced programming

• The user can select upper and lower limits to drift for individual TC sensors and conveyor speed

Monitoring function
1. Real-time oven temperature and conveyor speed variations are displayed on the screen. This ‘video’ can be stored for record keeping and it can be retrieved at any time
2. The oven drift is displayed graphically for each temperature sensor and for the speed sensor with the following legend:

• a. Red line denotes the temperature zero point. This is the actual temperature that the sensor measured when the monitoring program was started
• b. Gray line with green dot shows the current temperature
• c. Gray shaded area depicts how the temperature has drifted above and below the zero point since monitoring started. No temperature was measured above or below the gray shaded area

Footprint Live Monitoring

Footprint History Log

Footprint Hardware

• 30 thermocouple sensors are permanently installed in the reflow oven tunnel. They are housed in two probes, each containing 15 sensors.
• The sensors are attached with brackets to the left and right edge conveyors in close proximity to PCBs as they are processed in the oven.
• The probes are connected to a data acquisition unit that delivers the information to the computer. The Footprint system can use the oven computer or a separate PC.
• One speed encoder is attached to the conveyor gear to continuously measure the speed.

System Components
◦Two (2) thermocouple probes (each probe has 15 thermocouples)
◦1 ea. FTM eTPU data acquisition box with cables
◦1 ea. speed encoder
◦1 ea. Footprint software with software protection dongle

Computer Configuration