ST. LOUIS, MO, March 17, 2023 – The innovative Raphael 4040, a robotic brush conformal coater will be demonstrated at the SMTA Dallas Expo & Tech Forum – March 28. The Raphael 4040 applies conformal coating using a flow-through brush, controlled over an X, Y, Z optimized path. The brush allows conformal coating to be applied without overspray, thus no masking is required cutting time, material use, handling, and costs.
Agility Manufacturing in Dover, NH is one Raphael 4040 user that is enjoying its benefits. “We started using the Raphael 4040 on one board that we were manually spray coating,” said Reggie Michaud, General Manager. “For that project, the Raphael 4040 saves 4-minutes per board and we use 3x less conformal coating. The ROI was six-months!” Today Agility Manufacturing runs multiple PCB layouts through the Raphael 4040 consisting of thousands of boards and just installed their second Raphael 4040.
The Raphael 4040, designed and manufactured by Invention House, LLC, takes advantage of new low-cost manufacturing techniques and is appealing to contract manufacturers with razor-thin margins. The Raphael 4040 is both accurate and fast. The brush tip can be controlled to within 7000th of an inch and can complete boards quickly. Multiple boards or panels can be held within its 15”x15” work envelope.
As the saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Invention House’s core business has been manufacturing custom variable frequency drives, which were manually conformal coated with a disposable brush. While manual brush coating was tedious, the brush tip was ideal for weaving in and around keep-away areas. As their name implies, Invention House created an X, Y, & Z controlled robotic brush, Conformal coating flow can be stopped, started, increased, or decreased according to the coating program, and the brush speed can be controlled from point to point, front to back.
“The Raphael 4040 is ideal for coating PCB with a high number of keep-away areas and components,” said Mike Covala of Covalo Automation, which represents the Raphael 4040 in Texas and surrounding states. “Due to overspray from traditional coating methods, such boards require extensive masking prior to coating, and the Raphael 4040 eliminates overspray and masking entirely.”