Agenda

9:00 AM
Registration & Exhibitor Hall Open  

10:00 AM
SYP Breakout Session
Entrepreneurship on the Line
Mike Konrad, Aqueous Technologies

11:00 AM
SYP Bingo Card Scavenger Hunt

12:00 PM
Complimentary Lunch

12:15 PM
Lunch and Learn Keynote Presentation
Why Are We Cleaning "No-Clean"? A Fundamental Review of Post-Reflow Cleaning 
Mike Konrad, Aqueous Technologies

1:30 PM
Happy Hour

3:00 PM
Expo Floor Closes / CEMA Lab Tour

SYP Breakout Session:

Entrepreneurship on the Line
Mike Konrad, Aqueous Technologies

Entrepreneurship is often misunderstood as something reserved for business owners, founders, or people willing to take large financial risks. This presentation challenges that assumption by showing how entrepreneurial thinking can exist anywhere, including on the electronics manufacturing floor.

“Entrepreneurship on the Line” explores how the mindset of an entrepreneur can improve quality, reliability, job satisfaction, and career growth for line workers, technicians, engineers, and managers. The session focuses on practical traits such as ownership mentality, curiosity, problem solving without blame, thinking beyond one’s own station, making small improvements, and speaking up professionally when issues arise.

Keynote information:

Why Are We Cleaning "No-Clean"? A Fundamental Review of Post-Reflow Cleaning
Mike Konrad, Aqueous Technologies

For much of the electronics manufacturing industry’s history, cleaning printed circuit assemblies after soldering was not optional. Prior to the early 1990s, virtually all assemblies were cleaned as a standard process step to remove flux residues and other manufacturing contaminants. This practice changed dramatically following the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which eliminated the use of widely adopted chlorofluorocarbon-based cleaning solvents due to their impact on ozone depletion. The sudden loss of these effective solvents created an urgent need for alternative approaches, leading to the development and adoption of no-clean flux chemistries.

This presentation provides a fundamentals-based introduction to circuit assembly cleaning, with a specific focus on why no-clean flux residues are still frequently removed today. Intended for engineers with limited background in cleaning processes, the presentation explains what flux residues are, how they interact with other forms of contamination, and why the absence of cleaning does not only leave flux behind, but also leaves all other residues present on the assembly. These include ionic contamination, solder paste additives, handling residues, and environmental debris introduced throughout the manufacturing process.