Pick, Place, Podcast

How to Manage Moisture Sensitive Devices

May 02, 2022 CircuitHub and Worthington Episode 46
Pick, Place, Podcast
How to Manage Moisture Sensitive Devices
Show Notes Transcript

Similar to our discussion on ESD a few episodes back, moisture is also a "silent killer" for many electronic components. In this episode, we talk about what kind of damage moisture can cause in components, what precautions we take in the factory when working with moisture-sensitive devices, the different levels of moisture sensitivity, and measures you should take at home to protect your MSDs. Chris also has an excellent pet peeve related to public bathroom doors.

Show links:
Complimentary digital download of the ANSI-S20.20-2014 spec
A Minute with Miranda
IPC Handling Moisture-Sensitive Devices
Non-reversible humidity indicator cards
IPC/JEDEC J-STD-020E Preview
IPC/JEDEC J-STD-033D Preview
Uline heat sealer
Moisture barrier bag selection chart 
Silica gel packs on Amazon

pickplacepodcast.com

Chris:

Welcome to the pick place podcast, the show where we talk about electronics, manufacturing and everything related to getting a circuit board into the world. Have fun. Editing that one, Melissa.

Melissa:

Just do it over, All right, do over.

Chris:

welcome to the pick place podcast, a show where we talk about electronics, manufacturing and everything related to getting a circuit board into the world. This is Chris Denney from Worthington.

Melissa:

And this is Melissa Hough from CircuitHub

Chris:

Welcome back, Melissa.

Melissa:

walk them back, Chris.

Chris:

I am super, super excited about the IPC episode that we had last week, which I have not had the chance to listen to yet, but the recording of it, I enjoyed it. I hope everybody else enjoyed it as well.

Melissa:

Yeah, I certainly did. I learned a lot, IPC is something that I've always known about, but never really put too much thought into what exactly goes on there.

Chris:

It was really, really interesting. I hope we can end up having some more conversations with either those folks themselves, Theresa Patrick, or perhaps, you know, other members and different, different aspects of, of IPC. Cause it's broad. There's a lot, there's a lot they're doing there. Inevitably what happens when we have guests on the show is we end up having conversations afterward after we stopped the, stop recording. And of course we had this great conversation about membership to IPC afterward and it didn't record any of it. So we took, I wrote down some notes that I wanted to share just as a bit of a follow-up memberships are available to join IPC. And if you you know, you can sign up as an individual member if you want, if you're interested in doing something like that, and there's all sorts of member benefits that come on. The individual membership. For example, you get to download new standards on, you know, so let's say the A610 standard, which we referenced like a hundred times. It's currently on rev. Let me see the AFG H IHI we're on rev I. And they're about to release rev J now when they release rev, J you have 90 days to download that completely free. You do not have to pay for that. You get a digital download of that within the first 90 days of it being released as a member. And they're all DRM protected and everything. You need special software to open them in, in a PDF viewer. You get it for free just from being a member. Now, after 90 days, you'd have to pay for it, but you get like a really steep discount. So you don't have to pay list price on it. If you're a member. And then if you belong to an organization who signs up to be a member. So rather than an individual membership, if you get an organizational membership, each employee of that organization is then a member of IPC. So you get all the same benefits. You can get the standards and the discounts and you can, you know, get all the all the standards and specs and everything within the 90 days for free. It's a great, it's an awesome program. I had no idea about any of that.

Melissa:

Yeah. that's a great

Chris:

explaining that afterward. Yeah, really is a great deal. And I went nuts with it. After weekend, after we stopped recording, I went into like anything been released in 90 days, download, download, download, download. I just downloaded. There was like, there was like 9, 10, 9, or 10 different documents. I hit download on each of

Melissa:

And you guys to keep it after that 90 days or no,

Chris:

Presumably I think so. I, I, that's a great question. I don't know. We'll find out,

Melissa:

find out and report back in the next episode, I guess.

Chris:

And then there was a little bit of a closing the loop. We had the episode on ESD a few weeks back now. Gosh, a couple months ago now at this point, but and they have a, they have a training course on ESD. They have a lot of training courses. There's some great, there's some awesome stuff on IPC's website, all kinds of great training courses, if you're interested in looking at those. But and some of them are completely self-directed, they're just entirely on the web. Some of them are directed by an instructor remotely, which is cool. And then there's, there's obviously a bunch that are in person as well, but there's, there's some great training programs on there. So everybody should check those out. Speaking of training, another thing I noticed after our ESD episode was this awesome YouTube channel. So I mentioned that we like S C S for our static. Well, we, we like elimstat for a lot of products, but SES is a supplier that we buy test equipment and ESD bags and stuff from SCS has an awesome fun little YouTube channel called a minute with Miranda. Who's obviously an employee of SES and she does these great little 60 to 72nd YouTube clips talking about like one specific topic. So imagine if Chris Denny had a way of condensing this, this 60 minutes into 60 seconds, Miranda's found a way to do it, and you should just go watch her YouTube channel and stop listening to this. You'd saved yourself 59 minutes.

Melissa:

Save yourself A lot of time.

Chris:

A lot of time. And then also while I was on their website looking at all the different things they had to offer I noticed they had a link to the esda.org website where you can get a complimentary download of the ANSI S 20, 20 specs. So we referenced that a bunch of times in the ESD episode, and anybody can download that for free. You just give them your name and email address. And hopefully you don't get spammed, but yeah, you can get that. You can get that spec for free. So it's a good reference. And it's, it's how we got ours. So there you go.

Melissa:

good tips. Good tips. I like it.

Chris:

All right. Now, now, as if, as if that wasn't enough information for the listeners, what are we going to talk about today,

Melissa:

Oh, there's a lot of information coming more than I was expecting. So.

Chris:

do not know what you're talking about.

Melissa:

I'm looking at the outline here. And I think you do know what I'm talking about.

Chris:

I think I may have not done myself in this outline here.

Melissa:

Moisture sensitive devices, long awaited moisture, sensitive devices, episode.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. Now, first of all, I, we gotta have a disclaimer here. I'm really not much of an expert when it comes to moisture sensitive devices and, and the management of such, you know, it's, it's something that we obviously take care of, but you know, I'm not the only person that makes decisions in our company and there's people that, that keep after these things and, and keep an eye out for this stuff more so than myself. But I have a general knowledge of it, but I might make a mistake here or there. And so don't, don't take my every word. As gospel here, you might I can just wait for the email as well, actually, according to the no, I'm just kidding.

Melissa:

Don't make fun of nerds. Hey, there

Chris:

Hey, I am one. I can yeah, no, I'm sure I'm making mistakes. And if I do, please do actually email me. I would love to know, honestly, I kid I appreciate any feedback. It's always, it's always good.

Melissa:

Yeah, so I mean, really? What do we mean by moisture sensitive devices?

Chris:

I guess technically anything can be moisture sensitive if it's not hermetically sealed, so basically anything that can absorb moisture from the atmosphere. So if you're in a factory floor, your factory floor is probably not 0.0% relative humidity. There's going to be some humidity in the air. And plastics are permeable. Did you know that? Did you know that moisture can pass through plastic? You know, you buy a, you buy a Coke bottle, you feel like moisture is not going to pass through that, right?

Melissa:

yeah, that makes sense. It's not there's space between the atoms or whatever that, right.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. It happens. It happens. I'm not exactly sure the science behind it, but it happens. I think probably your Coke bottle is a particular type of plastic plastic that, that moisture can't get through. But it possibly can. I know that like, air can pass through plastic. That's why you know, things can spoil even in, even when stored in the sealed plastic container, they can spoil over time. They can dry out. Or not dry out. Well, it depends on if they started moist, they can dry out if they started dry, they can I can get mold. But no, so like a hermetically sealed device we're talking something that's sealed up so much that no air can pass through it. And there are some hermetically sealed devices, generally speaking. These are sort of like your super high reliability things that are going to space. You know, like they're not super common, you know? You're, you're not gonna, you're not gonna interact with these most of the time you're going to interact with moisture sensitive devices. So, and most of the time, these moisture sensitive devices are going to be. Of course your, your ICS, your semiconductors, you know, things that get packed in black plastic, chances are those devices are moisture sensitive, but not all of them. There's, you know, like LEDs and things like that, that are also pretty moisture sensitive. There's actually a super fun video that I call it super fun because it's so old. There's this IPC video I found on YouTube, w we'll put a link to in the show notes, but it's, it's definitely produced in the nineties. It's got like some good old fashioned CRT monitors. It's, it's a four, three aspect ratio instead of 16, nine. You got to watch it just for the lols nothing else it's, it's great. It's all accurate. Like it's the information is not out of date, so it's still valuable. But yeah, that, that is available. You know, the other interesting thing with moisture sensitive devices, your, your PCB itself. Is moisture sensitive. It can absorb moisture from yeah. From the atmosphere. So that's something else that you have to manage as well. There are lots of sensitivity to moisture and you know, what makes it especially tricky. You need a certain level of moisture in a factory for ESD. If you have 0% humidity, you're going to have a lot more static electricity and you know, issues with that. So you can't just, okay, well we'll just run a billion dollar dehumidifier and we won't have an issue. Well, now you're going to have ESD issue. So you got to find a balance there.

Melissa:

it's like opposing forces, like battling each other two silent killers, battling each otheer

Chris:

Yes, that's right. It's another chernobyl episode, ESD and MSD.

Melissa:

so when is this damage occurring?

Chris:

So, you know, this never used to really be an issue before SMT because the device has never really got hot enough now because of SMT and the use of reflux. And these devices are getting super hot and it's during the reflow cycle that the damage occurs. So if it's absorbed moisture into the body of the component, then that moisture is probably in some kind of a liquid form. But then as it gets hot take a guess. It's gonna, it's going to turn into a steam and you're going to have a rapid pressure change inside that component body. And you're gonna damage the component, you know, effectively, you're making like a little tiny bomb, you know, cause you you've trapped pressure inside of it. And eventually it's going to go and you're going to have issues.

Melissa:

okay. So it's not, it's not the moisture itself that's causing the damage. It's the, it's the pressure from the steam that's causing the damage that we're

Chris:

yeah, exactly, exactly. The pressure from the steam. So it can damage like like almost anything, almost anything can be damaged. What's interesting is there is a heating cycle with wave soldering and selective soldering, but that heating cycle is nowhere near the temperature of reflow. And so if there is a pressure buildup, it's generally not as extreme as it is in reflow. And for the most part, you've probably got devices that haven't been exposed to the atmosphere long enough. To cause damage. So like, even if that was to get pretty hot going through the wave solder or whatever, you've probably, you know, when you put that device on the board was probably less than 24 hours ago. So, you know, even even going through that heat cycle, again, it hasn't had time to absorb the moisture yet. So it's probably not going to happen during wave soldering is selective Saudi plus just, they just don't get as hot

Melissa:

yeah, I'm guessing also with the fact that the reflow is an it's an enclosed process versus the wave soldering or it's I dunno, it's kind of more out in the open, would that have any thing

Chris:

yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you're, you're, you know, when your wave soldering you're selective soldering and you're more concerned with the, with you know, kind of getting things warm, not really getting things hot. So, when you actually make contact with the board with your selective soldering nozzle, for example, in our factory, we're mostly just going to be soldering the leads. You know, we're not really going to be soldering. We're not going to be getting the body of the component really, really hot. So it's more localized heat as well. There is a preheating phase where you're, you're, you're fluxing your board and then you're warming up that flux, but that doesn't get hot. It just gets warm. No, it might be hot to, you know, a human, but not super hot to a device.

Melissa:

Makes

Chris:

you could probably burn yourself in a pre heater for selective soldering, but the devices is going to be fine. It's not going to, I'm not going to have much of an impact on it.

Melissa:

Yeah. Silent killer, Is it always So what ESD, you're not going to see you can't see that with the naked eye. Can you see moisture damage with the naked eye?

Chris:

Sometimes you can, it's rare. It is actually pretty rare, but sometimes the plastic body itself will crack, but that crack might be like so tiny that like, you're probably not going to see it even with a pretty good microscope. But apparently you can hear it. I've never experienced this myself, but they call it popcorning because if you put a board, a bunch of boards in your reflow oven and they all have the same issue with moisture in these components, all of a sudden you'll start to hear like pops like popcorn. I've been told about it. I've never heard it myself. I, you know, maybe

Melissa:

maybe you've just done a really good job of never damaging any moisture sensor devices,

Chris:

Yeah, of course I've never ever have I ever done any damage to it? Yeah, that's it? Well, the truth is I, we almost would not, would not know. Right.

Melissa:

unless someone tells you.

Chris:

unless somebody

Melissa:

And how would they know, that it's specifically because of that?

Chris:

and not ESD. Right. So, the only really way to know for sure is to use a device called a scanning acoustic microscope. I didn't know anything about these things until today, but apparently they're the types of device that you can kind of look through the plastic and you can see inside the device and you can see if the bonding of the dye itself to the substrate is broken, or if any of the wire bonds are broken. I'm sure. I don't know. It's, it's called a scanning acoustic microscope. I feel like the more scientific something sounds, the more expensive it gets. I'm sure these things aren't cheap. And I don't know of any, I don't know of any manufacturer that owns one of these I'm sure a lab does. Right? So for example, I used to work for a company that made or didn't make, but they were called the advanced process laboratory, the APL there in Binghamton, New York, look them up. If you, if you want to do some really advanced study on your devices, but they, they can diagnose and did diagnose a. Well known issue with a popular gaming console, that there was massive manufacturing defects. They diagnose that up at the APL. And I, I cannot literally cannot say who it was, but you can probably guess. But I bet you, they have one of these, right? Because their, their, their job is to, to, to go to the root cause. Okay. We have all these failures in the field. What could it have been caused by? And they're probably gonna use this kind of a microscope to try to find out, but yeah, it's no, you know, nobody's gonna, I, I have never heard of of, of contract manufacturer that owns one of these things. And if they do, I'd love to see one, give me a call. I'd love to go check one out. Don't call me, don't call me, send me an email. No, for that, you can call me for that. You can call me. Cause that would be really interesting. I'm okay. With a phone call for that, but email would be better. But yeah, so, you know, the trouble is we got, we got ourselves another silent killer here. Just like when we talked about in the ESD episode, it's, it's just like Chernobyl and the radiation poisoning, you know, you don't really know until it's too late because we're probably not going to see it visually. It might even pass like most tests. It was funny. I was looking up just trying to get some information for this episode. And I found somebody who was trying to figure out issues. They were having with their LEDs. And they found that their led boards, they had these like matrix boards of LEDs. They were fine when they tested them on their bench. And then when they get to get out into the field, they would fail and then they bring them back and they'd be fine on their bench. And then they send it back out and they found the field well it's because. On their bench. They're just powering them up for 30 seconds. And they're like, yeah, they work fine out in the field there. They got the sun's beating on them. They're getting more warm there. They're staying on for many minutes or hours. And then that, that small delaminating from the substrate of the dye has manifested itself in a failure. But then once it cools off enough, then it reattaches, and it works on their work bench. So that, that, you know, that's, that's creepy.

Melissa:

I was frustrating.

Chris:

I can imagine that would be very frustrating. If, if if you get moisture damage from a PCB, that's usually pretty obvious to see you can, you can see some like de lamination or, and it looks like a, honestly it looks like a blister. If we've ever burned your skin, it, it looks, it looks a lot like a blister you know, if you, if you burn your hand or something and you see your skin blisters up, that's honestly what You know, a moisture issue, a blistering looks like on a, on a PCB. It's pretty easy to spot most of the time.

Melissa:

How do we know if parts are moisture sensitive and which parts are moisture sensitive, more moisture sensitive than other parts. Since you mentioned that all components can be moisture sensitive, but we can't be that concerned about Every single component, because that would just take up way too much time.

Chris:

It'd be very expensive. Honestly you just guess, you just guess, just assume, make a lot of assumptions. No.

Melissa:

Okay. Very nice. Repeatable process. Yeah.

Chris:

Typically you'll see a label on the, on the bag or the carrier, you know, if it's in a real or in a tube, you'll see something, it's identifying it as a moisture sensitive part. Like some examples, LEDs are particularly moisture sensitive. I don't know the reasons behind this. I'm sure it has something to do with maybe the clear lens that they're having to use. You know, maybe the, maybe the plastic is more permeable than the other kinds of plastics that they use for regular diodes and, you know, ICS and stuff. But those are particularly moisture sensitive. I'm trying to think. I don't know that I've ever seen an led that is not moisture sensitive. Come to think of it. I'm racking my brain here and there. And when I say moisture sensitive, they're high up on the scale, which we'll get into later, but there's different levels of sensitivity. BGAs interestingly I did, I did not know this personally, but there's BGAs are especially moisture sensitive and I don't know that like they absorb moisture more than other devices, but I think the characteristics of the BGA may. That makes them how do I put this less safe. So in other words, if you've got an led that you've not managed very well, there there's ways of, of still using those LEDs. I think with BGAs, there's a certain point where it becomes useless. Like it's gotten to the point where it's absorbed to the most moisture and, and there ain't no undoing that you're done. You, you've basically got to scrap the part at a certain point and that that's not necessarily true with, with all devices, but we'll get into ways that you, that you deal with that. But to identify. Like, okay. Chris said, LEDs are moisture sensitive. He said, BJ's are sensitive. But generally speaking, the best way to know is the data sheet, right? The data sheet is going to tell you that that's going to be your that's going to be the gospel. I told you. Don't listen to Chris. Denny has got, yeah, it's always the data sheet. But kind of some tricks you can use is, is not tricks necessarily, but other indicators, look at the bag that it's in. So, if it's a moisture sensitive device and you've bought it from a reputable company, like your Digi, your Mausers, your arrows they will, they are going to put that thing into a moisture barrier bag. And these are going to look a little different from an ESD shielded bag. Whereas an ESD shielded bag that ESD shielded bags job is just to protect the device from ESD. It is not to protect the device from moisture. Moisture can still get through the ESD bag. So, you know, don't, don't just look at the bag, cause it can be easy to confuse the two because a moisture barrier bag looks a lot like an ESD bag and vice versa. They're very similar looking, but the moisture barrier bag is going to be is generally speaking. Good of a heavier gauge bag. You're going to feel the difference. Like if, if you were to able, able to hold these two things in your hands side by side, you would know immediately these two are not the same from each other. So that's one way to tell is literally the appearance and feel of the bag. Usually that moisture barrier bag will also have symbol. That identifies it as a moisture sensitive device. And it's, I think it's like a little, no smoking symbol, but instead of, you know, the cigarette and it it's a little water droplets. Yeah, so that's, there's, there's a few different ones. I think it used to be like a triangle or maybe, maybe it is a triangle now, and it's a circle. It used to be a circle, I forget. But it's you get the idea, a little water droplets, no smoking symbol, but water droplets instead of the cigarette. And, and that's kinda what you're looking for there and that'll, that'll be on the bag. Sometimes it'll even be on the reel itself. If it comes to in real time it might be on the tube. If it comes in a tube, you know, just look at the packaging a lot of times they'll have it on it. The really good you know, suppliers again, like Digi-Key and Mouser and them they'll go a step further and they'll put a label on there, a, like a warning. That says, you know, this is an ESD sensitive component and they'll, they'll put the moisture sensitivity level on there, which we'll we'll get into in a moment. But you know, so there there's a bunch of indicators by physically holding the part to identify whether or not it's is sensitive. There's also like there's software out there. So you can, you, you know, actually if you look up, if you look up almost any part in Dickey's database at the bottom of that parts page, there will be an environmental, some something, something table. I forget what it's called. Exactly. But they'll have a specific parameter in there that says, you know, moisture sensitivity, and they'll, they'll call it out right there. So that's, that's another way of looking it up. You know, it's possible that Digi-Key can make a mistake. You know, they entered, you know, that it was moisture sensitive when it's not and vice versa. So that's why the data sheet is always your go-to. But it's just a helpful tool for, for trying to identify those things. Yeah. There's lots of different ways to do it, but either way, once you know, this, you'll start to see it. And then the, the really telltale indicator is if you open the package and you find a humidity indicator card inside. Now, a lot of people you've probably seen these things before I if you've dealt with electronic devices, you've seen the humidity indicator card there they're small. They're like about the size of a playing card, maybe a little bit smaller than a playing card. And they'll have these little dots on them and these little dots will have text next to them that says, you know, if this is pink, then it's violated this. You know, humidity level, you need to bake it. And, and it explains itself right on the card pretty well. But the tricky thing with these cards is there's actually two types of them, which again, in researching this episode was news to me. But there is a type one card and the type two or a level, one card, a level two card, a level one card is kind of the most common one as far as I know. And, and it's one that's been around for a long time. It is a reversible humidity indicator card. In other words, you can drive that card back out and it will look like everything's fine, but the device has not been dried out.

Melissa:

yeah.

Chris:

So that can get scary. You can end up in a situation where the humidity indicator card is telling you that it's safe. And when it's really not, because it's, it's been re dried And then there's a level two indicator card where it is not reversible. There are certain indicators on there where once, once they've passed, they will dry out. Those cards will dry out, but there will be a section on that card that does not it, the bleed finishes and it stays there and you will see it in the future. So you know, that it has gone past and you know, not to trust the devices that are inside that packaging. So, oh, and you'll see in addition to humidity, indicator cards, you'll see desiccant inside and everybody knows a dessicant it is anytime you've bought herbs or, you know, little, you know, you buy cinnamon sticks. There's always a little, you know, those little packs you find inside there, actually, you know what? I think you find them in a what is it like ramen? I think there is. Oh, no, no, no, no. The season. Yeah, no, they're like this. That's what I was confusing. The seasoning inside ramen is about the size of a tiny desiccant pack. So don't, don't do not confuse those two. I remember where I've seen it now. Jerky almost always inside of a bag of beef jerky, which Melissa, I know you're intimately familiar with.

Melissa:

Oh yeah. Super at the, yes. As a vegetarian, I eat a lot of Turkey.

Chris:

There's there's a nice

Melissa:

though. I feel

Chris:

supplements pills. You'll see a lot of times inside pill bottles. Yep. But the desiccant that you see inside of these packages, it's not going to be as tiny as you see inside a pill bottles. Those things are like one or two grams. You're typically going to see 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 gram desiccant packs because they're trying to absorb quite a, quite a bit of moisture. And they might be in a package of components that cost $10,000. So a little $5 thing of desiccant is going to be nothing. Right.

Melissa:

it's worth it.

Chris:

it's worth it. So they're going to take care of that. There's actually a nice YouTube video that we found on level two indicator cards, which we'll have in the show notes, but it shows you the difference between the two and kind of why they're so insidious. There's also tons of software out there. I mentioned you can go to Digi-Key, but there's also like software management that companies like us might buy. And when we're dealing with moisture sensitive devices all the time, you can, you can like run your bill of materials against the software. And it'll tell you like, Hey, heads up, these devices are moisture sensitive, make sure you're managing them properly. And we actually recently invested in such software. We haven't implemented it yet. Hasn't been delivered, but it's, it's going to be a part of our new Fuji pick and place platform.

Melissa:

nice.

Chris:

Yep. So the pick and place machines will not populate boards with devices that have exceeded their floor life. And there's a whole management system for handling the material.

Melissa:

that's clever.

Chris:

sure very clever, because for the most part we've been doing all of this more or less manually. So having some software to kind of automate this for us and really, you know, it just steps up the level of security and, and helps to mitigate risk. Can mistakes still happen? Sure. Of course mistakes can always happen, but you really, you. You know, with doing this, you really elevated your, your security with this and you, you know, we can approach our customers with a high degree of confidence saying, Hey look, moisture sensitive devices are not an issue here. We know how to handle it. So that's another thing we're working on.

Melissa:

cool. Yeah. I'm excited that, Yeah. maybe do a video on that when you have it live.

Chris:

Yeah. Oh man. There's so much content. I would love to produce Melissa. That's that's definitely one of them.

Melissa:

got to get your machine.

Chris:

Yeah. I can't wait 50 something days and counting until they, it leaves the dock in Japan, June 7th.

Melissa:

And then I'm guessing quite a bit more days until it gets here until it's ready to use, I guess

Chris:

That's right. Because just because it leaves the dock in Japan, which is 50 days, 50 something days from today, by the time you're listening to this, it's going to be maybe under 40. But the That you know, you leave the dock in Japan, then you've got to get truck to a port. Then you got to get put into the port, right. They got to find a place for the container. Then they got to find a ship for it. They got to wait for the, you know, got to get on a ship that has got across this big, giant sea that has got to get unloaded in a, you know, then you got to wait for your port in California. And then,

Melissa:

going to take a while.

Chris:

I mean, there's just the levels here of things we're going to be waiting on. It just goes on and on and on. So I I'm thinking sometime in July, we'll get these delivered maybe August. We'll see.

Melissa:

Well, while we wait, why don't you tell us about moisture classification?

Chris:

Sure. This is exactly what we came here for today. We're punchy. It's Friday. Yeah, so there's different. There's different classes of moisture sensitivity. So like most like resistors and capacitors and stuff like that. There they are. What is known as MSL, one moisture sensitivity, level one, basically unlimited. There's no moisture issues that you need to be concerned with from a, from a reflow damage standpoint, you know, moisture getting near those components can still cause damage, but it's a different type of damage. It's going to be more of like a corrosion and you're going to have issues with soldering. So it's, it's not like you, you have nothing to worry about. There's still

Melissa:

don't go soak in your components and water, like

Chris:

No, but that would be an interesting experiment. I would love somebody to tell me know how, tell me how that worked out for them. Yeah. An exercise in futility, then there's moisture sensitivity, level two which is considered to be one year, you know, from opening. Usually not much to worry about with moisture sensitivity, level two, and then there's moisture sensitivity level 2 a honestly, don't see this too, too often. Usually it skips to a, but two A's is technically considered four weeks. We usually see moisture sensitivity, level three. This is kind of once MSL three, like it's like a typical bell curve, you know, it's, it's like everything's either kind of one, two or three that that's where you're seeing most, most of your things. And those are all your LEDs and stuff. They're, they're going to be MSL three for the most part. And that's just one week. So by the time you open that, you're, you should really only have. In ambient room conditions for no more than a week. And then, you know, now, now a clock is ticking and you gotta be careful with how you manage those devices. And MSL 4 is just three days. MSL five is just two days and then MSL is just one day you have 24 hours from the time you open that device to the time it gets through its final reflow cycle. So just because it went through the reflow oven once doesn't mean, oh yeah, great. Must've baked it out again. No, not true. You still, you have, if it's a double double-sided assemble, you got to get that thing back to the front of the assembly line and get that second side built. And refloated all in within 24 hours that can, that can get really tricky. That takes a lot of, you know, not jumping through hoops necessarily, but you gotta be, you really got to know

Melissa:

Yeah. Especially if, if you're like, if you're building a lot of units and you have them, like all the components set up, how do you deal

Chris:

So you have, you do point of view storage. So you don't open that. You don't open that package until like literally, you know, you're about to use those devices. Typically they come in trays. So you're, you know, anything with MSL five or greater, honestly, even MSL four or greater typically come and trays. Now you're talking really expensive devices and usually these are BGAs and things like that. And so that means you're only going to have, you know, 50, maybe a hundred devices on a tray. So you're only opening one tray at a time. You're getting that reflowed so you can pretty well manage 50 to a hundred boards and get both sides built in a day but yeah, it is something you have to, you have to manage well, otherwise you have to, you would have to bake the boards. You'd have to redraw the entire board to rebate that just that one company. That is MSL five, you know, or five a and then there's, there's MSL six, which MSL six is sort of a, it's like a catch all. It's like a sort of like, we don't really know. So you got to bake it right before you use it. I, I, this is my limited understanding of it. I'm sure it's far more complex than that, but you know, we've seen some MSL, six devices. We've had great success with them by, by baking them right before we use them. So we bake them, wait for them to cool. You know, we bake them the appropriate amount of time and then wait for them to cool, get them soldered, get them onto a circuit board, refill them. And they come out great. And we have high reliability with them, but there's no like limit necessarily to how long they could be on the factory floor, not limit, but no sort of grace period. It's just like bake and use right away. Cause you gotta think about it. If MSL 5a is 24 hours, Then MSL six is, you know, potentially even less. So, you know, you're going to treat those almost, you know, like do it that exact same day, do it within that same shift even. And that's typically how we handle those ideally. And I think for the most part, when we've seen MSL six devices, they've been on the side of the board that we finish last. So it gets through the reflow cycle and it's done and we don't have to worry about it again. And now all of these moisture sensitivity levels that were just listed here, you know, one week yeah, four weeks, one week, three days, these are all assuming a certain condition within the factory. They're just assuming that you're going to be at least below 60% humidity, which can be kind of difficult in the summer.

Melissa:

Yeah, if you don't. have like air conditioning.

Chris:

Yup. Yup. And there, there are factories in, you know, certain areas that do not have air conditioning or,

Melissa:

saying that it's not normal to like most of the factories he worked in did not have air conditioning, I think.

Chris:

that's right. That's right. Yep. So especially if you're working in more of a, kind of, less high tech factory where you don't have to be so concerned with the environmental conditions of the products. Yeah. Air conditioning is less common in electronics manufacturing. It is basically universal at this point. I, I've not personally been in an electronics manufacturing facility that did not have appropriate heating and cooling air conditioning. I've been in plenty of them that it's a nice day on a Friday and they rip open that garage door to let the sunshine in and all the humidity with it.

Melissa:

Yep.

Chris:

You know, you're small shops and they're blasting the tunes and they're running boards and I've seen it. Yeah. So, it's, it's possible that you'll have fluctuating conditions, you know, throughout, throughout the day. You know, and, and so you'll see that. So a lot of factories will have charting. So they'll actually have like a data logger that keeps track of the temperature and humidity in the room to make sure it's not exceeding 60%. And then they'll balance their HVAC system against that to make sure that it's appropriate and the stays under 60% and, and vice versa. Sometimes, you know, you need to be running the air conditioning excuse me, you needed to be running the heat to, you know, keep people from dying because we're warm blooded animals and you're drying out your factory. And now all of a sudden you're super, super dry. Well, that's no good for ESD. So you'll actually have humidifiers that are running to keep the humidity just, just the right level. So this is, this is a thing that factories have to worry about good times. Nice fun balancing act. But all, all of these kind of these standards, they came from what you heard about a couple episodes ago, or I guess it would be last episode, right? IPC, IPC and J deck came up with these standards. So you have the J standard O 20 and the J standard. Oh, 33 0 20 is currently at rev E and O 33 is currently rev. D we have links to the table of contents for each of these standards in the show notes, but because you have to pay for the standards. They're not, they're not free, but they're not too expensive. I think the oh, 33, which is the one we have it's like 50 bucks. It's not real expensive to get it. And you can actually find older versions of the standard. On on the web, but I wouldn't trust them. There's actually quite a bit has changed between. I looked at them and quite a bit of change. So get, get the latest standard if yoou can. But the standard is interesting. The O 20 standard, that's more for device manufacturers. So that's something that your Texas instruments lab is going to look at, and they're going to test their packaging to determine where to, you know, what to call this. Like, can we get by calling this MSL 2 know if it fails too early, we gotta call it MSL three. Yeah. So they, and they, they have like the test methods and everything. And how do you know when you've reached a certain point that it becomes dangerous to reflow? And so they're going to look at the 20 to come up with their, their limit. And then we're going to look at the O 33. And what we're going to do is we're going to take that limit that Tia gave us. So they're going to say MSL three, and we're going to look at the to determine. How to handle it and what to do about it. Side point, the name of the oh, 33 document is the handling comma packing, comma shipping, and use of moisture sensitive surface Mount devices. No comma, no Oxford comma after shipping.

Melissa:

Someone's going to have to go and leave a comment on the IPC website after this episode.

Chris:

I think I'm going to get my name published in a, in a S in a standard rev E yeah, baby. That cracked me up when I saw that. Yeah, no comma. So, but yeah, those are, that's a great doc document to reference. If you're curious to know more about that, the reason, like, if you're a designer and you're listening to the. Just know that it exists. You, you don't need to read this thing. We, I need to read this thing, right? Our factory needs to read this thing. We need to know how to handle our devices properly. If you're a designer, just knowing that it exists is enough. But I, I know that it's not just designers that listen to the show. I know other manufacturers do, and people who are kind of just getting started in their careers and stuff. So, it's, it's great info, it's it, it may sound incredibly boring with Chris describing it, but if you read it, it's a quick read, it's only a few pages and it's, it's really, really helpful. It'll help you understand

Melissa:

what a fear? What if you are a designer, but you're consigning parts, which I think we will get to that,

Chris:

yeah, that's all part of it

Melissa:

then it could be useful.

Chris:

that could be useful for you. Why don't we get into it? So, you know, as mentioned, let's talk about how we use it internally and then we'll get into. What you, how you, what you would do as, as a as a customer of a factory like ourselves, because the truth is, you're almost certainly going to come across a moisture sensitive device in your design. Like all these packages are getting tinier and tinier and tinier, and they're more and more susceptible to moisture absorption. And more importantly, like you, they can absorb moisture more quickly because they are tinier, right? So if you think about it, if you fill a 50,000 gallon swimming pool with water, from a hose, it's going to take you a few days, right. But if you feel your little kiddie pool, this is going to take you a couple of minutes. So, as these devices are getting smaller, the same amount of moisture is going to fill them up quicker. So it's, it's becoming a thing. We are doing our very best to keep an eye on these things and make sure that we're buying from. Reputable distributors that, you know, they're going to take great care to make sure that they deliver it to us in a safe way that we don't have to worry about baking them when they arrive. Because you know, there, there is actually, if you look at the O 33 document, there is a provision for repacking. So when your Digi-Key buys a, you know, a million dollars worth of, you know, these islands BGAs they want to be able to sell us 10 of them without potentially exposing the other 10,000. And we have there, there's a provision in there of how long you can open a moisture sensitive device package in an ambient, regular, you know, comfortable for a human humidity level environment and reseal that package, get it back into a dry box, even without a. Starting the clock, so to speak. So, and I forget what it is. I didn't read every single word of this document before today, and I didn't write this down, but there is a certain time limit. I want to say, it's like 15 minutes or something like that, where you can open that package, that, that sealed package take out the devices you need reseal it and you're safe. But so for us, when, when we buy them from a digi key and we open those packages, we're typically using those right away because, you know, we're, we, we know we identified it as a moisture sensitive device. We've left it in it's it's moisture barrier bag the entire time, right before we load the. And then we load the feeder and we run the job. And most of our jobs take less than 24 hours to run. And, you know, it's usually something we don't even have to worry about. Same goes for our PCBs. The PCB is coming you know, vacuum sealed packages with desiccant and we get those reflowed right away too. It's, it's pretty rare that we come across a PCB damage from moisture sensitivity. It does happen. It does happen. Don't get me wrong. And there are certain, there are certain PCPs we know just by their stackup we've been ordering for many years that are even more moisture sensitive and we will bake those. We don't even bother cause we've seen, we've seen them get damaged so many times before we'll bake them right away. Just every time we get them. So that, that is a thing as well. But sometimes customers will send us devices and we, and, and they ask us to store them because they're going to be placing multiple orders. Right. So they say, okay, here's a thousand devices. I'm going to need a hundred for this order and a hundred for that order and 500 for this order. Right? Well, we might be building these over the course of a year and their MSL three right one week. So we have to take proper care of these devices. We will store those devices in a dry cabinet once, once the bag's been open, if the bag's on open we'll we'll, we'll typically leave it because dry storage cabinets are expensive. Dry storage cabinets are like these the, you know, picture a cabinet in your kitchen except more high-tech and steel and glass. And. They have electronic controls inside of them that are constantly drawing the air. So they'll have, they'll have some kind of a desiccant that has air, you know, heat going into that desicant and the air is circulating through that desiccant and the moisture is going out into the atmosphere and the dry air is going back into the cabinet to keep the cabinet under five degrees relative, or excuse me, 5% relative humidity. So we're, we're going to store most of these devices in that, in that cabinet. If for some reason, you know, we're running out of room in that cabinet, we will take the devices out and we will vacuum seal them in brand new brand new bags moisture barrier bags with fresh desiccant and a fresh humidity indicator card after we've baked them. So, you know, you, you may have opened that package and the clock starts. And okay. It's been open for 24 hours and then you put it in a dry cabinet and now the clock stops. Well, just cause it's MSL three. And it says you have a week while you don't have a week anymore. You only have six days now because it's been open for 24 hours. So best practices before you put them into a moisture barrier bag for long-term storage, you rebake them before you before you put them in that bag. Cause you don't really know what the time limit is. So you put fresh humidity, indicator card in there after baking them with fresh desiccant and you've sealed them up. Now they're just a safe as if they came from Digi-Key. So we'll, . We'll, we'll manage components that way as well. But when, when they hit the floor again, that's one of the first things we're going to look at is that humidity indicator card. We're going to pull that out and we're going to read it and we're going to make sure it hasn't violated that. You know, at what it's telling us on the card and it does sometimes it'll happen. You know, you might get a puncture in the bag or it wasn't stored properly for some reason, or it came to us the wrong way. And you look at that card and it says, Hey, look, you know, these have absorbed moisture. So then we have to bake them. And I know I've said this like a hundred times by now talking about baking. And

Melissa:

Yeah. what does

Chris:

what that is yet. But it's, it's as simple as it sounds. You're literally putting these things into an oven. Now I'm not putting them into a Kenmore, you know, oven for cooking my Turkey. It's, it's, it's an oven specifically designed for dry and electronic components. Honestly, the principles are not that much different from a convection oven. You have air blowing through and

Melissa:

or a dehydrator, like you would use

Chris:

like a dehydrator.

Melissa:

you would use to dry out fruit or something, I

Chris:

Yup. With, with more heat, I think you would, you would use for fruit. These things should be capable of getting up to, I think at least 150 degrees here is Chris looking this up real time and he doesn't have it in front of them. Hang on a second. This is going to bug me if I don't see this,

Melissa:

Okay.

Chris:

Yeah, 125, at least 125 degrees. So you want to be able to get that oven up to that temperature and that's Celsius by the way, sorry. 125 Celsius, right? So not every oven, not every dehumidifier that you buy from Amazon is going to be capable of doing that dehydrator. And, but the tricky thing is 125 degrees. Celsius is going to melt. Certain types of plastic are not going to survive. You're not putting a Ziploc bag in there and getting it out the same way it went in. It was 125 degrees Celsius and the same with the carrier tape. So if you've got a tape and reel and you've got a bunch of LEDs and a tape and reel, you can not put that thing in there at 125, that all that tape is just going to shrivel up and shrink around that device. So you have to bake it at a lower, you have to bake it at a lower temperature there's provisions for baking a loaded temperature for a longer time. So the reason this becomes important is if you're consigning parts to a factory and you haven't properly managed the moisture sensitivity of that device, And we opened that humidity and we opened that package and we look at the humidity indicator card and it says it has to be baked and it's in the tape and reel and that soft plastic, well guess what? Your boards, aren't shipping,

Melissa:

Yeah, they're going to be late.

Chris:

they're going to be late. And some of these devices, they can take five days. They can take 10 days the bake at that low temperature. There's I mean, I think it's hysterical. We've never actually done this, but there's even some devices that they say to bake. Let's see, what does it say? Four, if you had to bake it at 40 degrees Celsius at less than 5% relative humidity, and it was a particularly thick device, meaning greater than four millimeters. So it's thicker than four millimeters, a MSL level three, according to this chart would have to be. For 79 days.

Melissa:

no way. I'm pretty sure you should just buy new parts.

Chris:

I usually just buy new parts at that point. Yeah. 79 days. So, but that's a very thick think about two millimeter devices, a pretty thick device. You don't, you don't usually see something. Usually you'll see like an led and you're talking to half a millimeter thick. And so in, in those circumstances, it's typically like eight, eight to 24 hours. Yeah. So that's usually we just bake them overnight and that's usually what we have to do in you're fine. It can be as little as even one hour. It all kind of depends on how hot you can get it, how thin the device is. Yeah, there's, there's a whole chart in that. Oh, 33 spec that we reference whenever we have to bake devices. So, yeah, good times. But can you imagine 70th it's better be expensive and hard to get parts, which pretty much everything is nowadays.

Melissa:

Can you imagine telling a customer that, oh my

Chris:

Yeah, I can't ship for 79 days because this I got to bake these. But I presumably it could happen. But yeah, I haven't, haven't had to do that yet. Because honestly, if it's that thick, it's probably not in tape real. It's probably in a tray, a high temperature tray. So you can, you can bake it for what does it say here? 48 hours. So you can put it up to 125 degrees Celsius, bake it for 48 hours and you're all set. No big deal. Oh, actually here we go. Here's another chart. If you can get it up to 150, you can do it for 24 hours. See, there you go. So, yeah, that's, that's the far more common, far more common is a tray overnight 24 hours, something like that. And then you're, you're good to go. Now, what can you do as an engineer? You know, our buyer or somebody who's kind of dealing with devices and you want to send them to a factory and you know that they're going to have to get re flowed. Well I recommend you go out and buy a $20,000 dry box.

Melissa:

Well, Chris, that that might just be above my price range. Do you have any other suggestions?

Chris:

I think that's the only thing you can do. Yeah, of course. So, buy from a reputable supplier and don't open the package. That's really the best thing you can do. But obviously that's not always possible. So you, you, you may know that you're going to be okay, you you've chosen this microcontroller, you know, you're going to design a board with it. You're you're in, you're bought a thousand of them from Digi-Key or whatever. Did you keys done everything to make sure that they get that package to you safe? You're not going to have any moisture sensitive issues. You can use that thing right away, but you're going to take it up. You're going to open that package and you're going to put it, you know, you're going to take one device out and you're going to solder it to your board and you should just leave that package out next to an open window and make sure you don't seal it and make sure it's in the sunlight and you should be fine. No, that would be bad. You want to seal that package up as quickly as possible? You know, so you open you get your device out and seal it up. If you want, you can buy in a lot of places already have these it's, it's not unusual if you work at a, you know, even a reasonably small reasonably medium-sized company, you know, you'll, you'll have somebody there. We'll probably have a heat sealer of some sort check and shipping somewhere. Somebody's gonna have a heat sealer, try to heat seal that bag. If you can, you don't have to suck all the air out. That's. to suck all the air out. If you just squeeze it out with your hands a little bit, and then heat seal. It, that's the best thing you can do. If you don't have a heat sealer, just, just push all the air out, make sure the desiccant stays in there and make sure that card stays in there. And just tape that thing up as tightly and securely as possible with ESD tape. Used ESD tape. But yeah, like give it a fold, give that bag a fold, kind of pinch it off, you know, and then, and then tape it up and that's usually going to be fine. You know, you don't have to go crazy with these things, but you should know that that, because these moisture barrier bags are a little bit thicker and a little bit kind of, know if I want to call them more brittle, but they're I'm not sure what the term is I'm looking for, but they can be punctured more easily. They're less forgiving than a regular ESD bag. The moisture barrier bags are less forgiving. So be very careful. Don't, don't just be tossing these things around, into a box or into a cabinet or something, you know, like I honestly, I would recommend that if, if you've got moisture sensitive devices and moisture barrier bags and you did the right thing, you took your device out and you resealed it and gave it a fold and taped it up. Maybe even, you know, like put that inside of a bubble bag or wrap a little bit, a bit of bubble around it, just to protect the. Right. So let's let the bubble take the beating and keep in mind. Now that you're in an ESD safe moisture barrier bag, you don't have to use the special pink bubble you can use. You can use any kind of, you know, regular bubble will be fine because it's protected inside that bag. But but yeah, he, sealing is probably the best thing to do because then that's just completely, you know, the, the risk with the tape is the tape will give up. Right. It'll come off and that's what you don't want. So, yeah, heat sealing is probably the best thing to do. You can also get yourself some resealable moisture barrier bags. They sell these like, so, you know, the Ziploc style cookie resealable and you can get some moisture barrier bags that have that. I personally, I've never seen one. I'm sure that they do exist. Must they right. They must exist. I assume they exist here. I am saying this and I'm thinking to myself, I've never actually seen one of these. I've seen them for ESD, but I'm not seeing them for moisture barrier. I wonder if they don't, because there's the Ziploc thing is plastic and would let a moisture through, come to think of it. Yeah. Hmm. Ponderous thoughts. I'll have to look that up, but but yeah, just make sure that you you're, you're, you're careful with the bag, treat it well, don't be tossing it around and then tear it. Probably not a bad idea to buy a few extra just to keep on hand, keep in the corner, you know, keep it safe. Don't don't just toss these things around cause they can be damaged. We buy all of our moisture barrier bags from a technitool we like the brand S C S as the brand we've we've had good, good success with there's also Desco there, there's a number of other manufacturers that make these things. But we like the dry shield brand from SES and they have actually a really good chart on their website for like what kind of moisture barrier bags to choose, because believe it or not, again, it's all about mitigating risk, not eliminating risk and not all moisture barrier bags are the same. And some of them only work for a year and others work for 10 years, you know? So there's, you know, just be mindful of that. But we have a link to a nice PDF document that SCS puts put together that helps you select your moisture barrier bag. If you go to technitool's website, if you filter by, I don't know how you remember this. Maybe we can include these notes in the sh in the show notes too, but a metalized polyester, polyethylene that's, that's the magic metalized polyester. That that's the magic word there. You'll find all the moisture barrier bags there and know. Get yourself a handful of these in case soap. And then in case you do ruin that bag, that's sitting on your bench, you can put it in a fresh one and you can reuse the desiccant that came out of the old one. If, if you just ruined it, if it's, if you notice it's ruined on your bench for a long time, the jig is up. It's too late. You're done. Yeah, but just, just be careful of that. And just keep in mind that ESD bags are not moisture barrier bags. And, and you want to be careful with that. And also moisture barrier bags are not always ESD. So you need to, you need to get the combination bags, you can buy a moisture barrier bag that's designed for, you know, greased, bearings. You know, you don't need to worry about ESD with a greased bearing, but you do need to worry about moisture. So they sell, they sell moisture barrier bags for, for other products. You need to make sure you're getting the one that our ESD as well. Probably not a bad idea to get some silica gel packs, you know, get some desiccant, have those handy. These are cheap things, right? Like the moisture barrier bags are going to cost you 50 bucks. The, the silica gel is going to cost you another 25 bucks. It's just a small little thing just to just some insurance so that you don't have to worry too much about it. But if, if it does happen, if it does happen and it will happen, don't panic. Don't go out buying a drying oven and a vacuum sealer and a dry cabinet and all this kind of stuff. Just, just a quick email, let us know you, you, you know, these are compromised and when we send these to you, but they gotta be baked and almost any. Contract manufacturer worth their salt. They're going to have a drying oven and a vacuum sealer and all these sorts of things and they know how to deal with it. They're going to have fresh desiccant. They're gonna have fresh humidity, indicator cards. They're going to take care of it. And yeah, just, just let them take care of it for you, but don't just go send an in thinking everything's all AOK because we might open it and go, Hey, we've got to dry these things and we're gonna need a few days to get that done, you know? So it does happen. It was interesting. I remember when we bought our our vacuum sealer, which this thing, I forget what we spent on. I wouldn't say we spent like a couple of thousand dollars on this vacuum sealer. It's no joke these things. This is, this is not a a food saver, vacuum sealer, the food saver, vacuum sealers they're designed. Have you ever used the food saver, vacuum bags and the vacuum sealer?

Melissa:

I haven't myself, but I know, I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Chris:

So if you've used one, anybody out there who's listening, who's used one though. They'll know what I'm talking about. They have kind of a the kind of a rough side and the smooth side one side is sort of this like, I don't know if it's like a honeycomb sort of, it's, it's like a textured and that texturing is what allows the air to escape from the bag when you do the vacuum ceiling. So there's a gasket inside your food saver that will seal off the bag. But because of that sort of corrugation, that sort of that texture it doesn't completely seal it. And it allows the air to get sucked out of the bag, through that corrugated, that rough texture before heat sealing it that those bags, they do not makee eSD moisture barrier backs in that same material. So you can't just use a food saver to, to save your, save your devices. However, that being that being said, you could possibly use a regular moisture barrier bag, tape it up. Good. And then put that inside of a food saver bag. Just saying that's one option. If you, if you were so inclined that you wanted to set yourself up with a vacuum sealing operation, I don't recommend this. I do not recommend this, but if you were so inclined and you don't want to spend$2,500, like we did on a, on a vacuum sealer designed for ESD moisture barrier bags that that's an option. I guess I don't recommend it. Just send it to us. We'll take care of it. But when we bought ours, this is the whole point of that conversation. The manufacturer said, Hey, just so you know, don't totally suck all the air out of the bag. You know, the only reason that you're evacuating the air from the bag is to try to eliminate, you know, basically packaging issues. So like not packaging issues storage and stacking issues. Because if you think about it, if, if you were to just kind of vacuum seal this bag, you got a big bubble of air in there. It's kind of annoying. Right? And, and, and it's going to be difficult to stack things. It's gonna be difficult to put them in kits and, you know, cause it's just kind of this rolly bubble of air in there. When you vacuum seal it, you're . Not, you're not vacuum tight, sealing it. You don't want it to suck down and conform around all the components and all that kind of stuff. You could actually damage the packaging, you know, cause some of these reels aren't super, super strong and or, you know, but anyway, and then the desiccant becomes less effective because there's no air to allow anything to pass through. So you can never like you need the air to pass through the devices and into the dessicant. there's no air, then that moisture is just going to stay in the devices and never pass through. You know, you need a medium to carry it through. So you need a little bit of air, a little bit of air, and that's why when you get them from Digi-Key and Mouser, you find that they're not vacuum tight, they just need a little bit of air. You could just kind of push it flat with your hand and, and seal it. You know, but when we're, when we're sealing as many bags as we do, we just need kind of an automated way of doing it. That's why we made the investment. We did. Yeah. Fun fact.

Melissa:

interesting.

Chris:

Do you have any other questions about moisture sensitive devices? Or can I talk about my pet peeve?

Melissa:

I cannot think, of anything else about moisture sensitive devices that I a desire to learn right now.

Chris:

If anybody has any questions I'm happy to ask, answer them. If anybody has any corrections, I'm more happy to hear them, honestly, because you know, I could be dead wrong on some of this stuff, but we'd love to hear it. My pet peeve. I've been waiting for this one. I am thrilled for this one, but I'm even more thrilled for my next one.

Melissa:

Let's hear it here

Chris:

I wrote down two pet peeves that relate to each other. This one is about bathroom exits. Okay. Now there is, there is a wonderful piece of legislation in the United States. Uh,

Melissa:

bathrooms. Is that

Chris:

public bathrooms called the Americans with disability act ADA. Now the beautiful thing about the ADA is it says basically any new building or any renovation that's done in a public space, you need to have an ADA compliant bathroom. In other words, you need it to be possible for people with disabilities to be able to use the bathroom duh absolutely fantastic role. So this, my, my pet peeve has nothing. To do with that law, that is an obvious win for society. Period. End of story. My pet peeve is with the designers and how they apply that rule. What they've done is they've gone cheap. They've made the doors swing into the bathrooms rather than swing out of the bathrooms.

Melissa:

Wait of the bathroom of the bathroom or the like of the stalls

Chris:

the bathrooms, the bathrooms, the stalls are fine. The stalls that's

Melissa:

No, that that that's a pet peeve too though. Cause I can tell you

Chris:

I'll explain. Well, yeah, you're right. I that's look, hear me out first and then we'll talk about, and then we'll talk about the stalls you need to be able to get a wheelchair through there or somebody who's on crutches or has some other disability moving around. They need to be able to have like a landing zone once they enter the bathroom so that the door can fully swing open and closed and without trouble without difficulty. Right? And there's all sorts of specs and measurements of how, how you do this and that. And engineers and architects, they, they understand these things and they make sure that the bathrooms are compliant to it. You can have the door swing into the bathroom, which might have a big space where that you can fill with a swinging door, or you can have a reasonable sized space outside of the bathroom that you can also have that door swing into. However, it's a lot easier to put a tight little corridor where now you can not comfortably fit a wheelchair, get around easily in in with with a door that is swung open. So they usually put it on the inside of the bathroom. The problem with this. I like to wash my hands before I exit a bathroom. Do you like to wash your hands before you exit a bathroom?

Melissa:

duh. Yes.

Chris:

of course you do. Everybody does. Everybody does. Right? Every single person on the planet likes to wash their hands after using the bathroom, right? no. that's the problem. And then their nasty little hands that are covered in all kinds of disgusting germs, they grabbed that door handle and they swing into the bathroom with it. And now I've washed my hands and I have to grab that door handle.

Melissa:

Oh, you mean you can't just push it open? Yeah.

Chris:

if they made the bathroom door swing out of the bathroom and the architect designed it to be ADA compliant with the doors swinging out, I could just take my shoulder and just. Push it right. Open no issues. I could even kick it with my little foot at the bottom. There's all kinds of things I can do to exit that bathroom without touching the handle of the gross dude that came in before me. And didn't wash his hands, get it.

Melissa:

Yeah. that's why you, well, I dunno, I always take a paper towel and then use that to open the door, but then the problem is a lot of

Chris:

band-aid

Melissa:

Well, each true, but then a lot about the rooms, they don't put a trashcan. so then you're like,

Chris:

Yup. So you, I w I walk out with it,

Melissa:

yeah, yeah,

Chris:

I walk out with it and then I try to find a, I try to find a garbage outside of it. Hopefully I can find one you know, or if it's a place I frequent a lot, I've been known to throw it right on the floor to imply you should put a trash can here.

Melissa:

Yeah.

Chris:

Yeah. I'm that guy. that guy. I'm so sorry if you've ever walked into a men's bathroom and you go, why, why are all these paper towels on the floor

Melissa:

because Chris was there.

Chris:

It's because I was there and I was mad that nobody put a trash can there. that's very petty of me that I am not a good human being. I realize that I am not a good human being, but architects, please, please make your bathrooms ADA compliant, but make it so I can push the door open as I leave the bathroom so that I don't have to touch the handle. Please. Can we do this? I do recommend if you're a business owner you know, you're a facilities manager or something like this, they do make very inexpensive, very cheap little, little foot things that you can grab with your foot to swing the door open that I believe are also ADA compliant. So you can use. Like they have, they stick out a little bit and they have a little bit of a rough texture on top. And so you push your foot on it and it pulls it open. So if you ha, if you find yourself with a bathroom with one of these, get yourself a a little thing to pull it open with your foot.

Melissa:

I was going to say the problem with the stalls going in the stalls doors going in

Chris:

You can't walk

Melissa:

yeah. Like every time when I'm in an airport and they have those and you have like your backpack and you have a carry on and you're like, oh, how do I close the door? And it's just awkward. And then you have to get like really close to the toilet. I'm like way closer to the toilet and you want to be.

Chris:

Again, this has everything to do with ADA compliance, which again, not complaining about ADA compliance. I think it's important that you, we, we follow this rule. It's because if they were to swing out. And that corridor where they swing out to is too small. Then you can't get a wheelchair around it. If that door was stuck open, right. You get it. So like, think about it. Like if, if you're, if you're a person, a wheelchair that has use of your arms, you would just reach out and you would close it, but not everybody does. Right. So you need to be able to get by. So an architect would design it properly so that there's enough room to swing out or there's enough room to swing in. There's plenty of walking room. Like after you get in and close the door, it's very easy to get in and out of, but they make these things tiny, tiny, tiny, because they don't want to use all the space in the building on bathrooms. They want to use it on, you know, more useful, important things like stores and whatever else, you know?

Melissa:

Well, I used to make money.

Chris:

I just disbelieves me so much. It bugs me so so much. If I ever find myself in a position with having any influence over the design of a building, you know, that bathroom door is going to be a push to exit Beth.. There you

Melissa:

I'm going to, that's another, another thing I have to take notice of in my everyday life now. Thanks to you, Chris.

Chris:

We are ruining people's joy of life, one pet peeve at a time,

Melissa:

Every time, I open any cardboard packages, any packaging at all at this point.

Chris:

especially at this point, especially after after T's. I love how they all call her. Mrs. T it's so good. Talk about that plastic packaging. That was so good. That was such, that was an epic pet peeve, epic pet peeve. I can't believe, I hadn't thought of that one We're just dogging on packaging and architects today. Ah, well, if you have any complaints about the design of your bathroom you can always contact them. Contact at pic place, podcast.com. You can tweet us at CircuitHub or at w assembly. We'd love to hear from you. And once again, please, please, please. If you know of anybody you think might like the show, let them know about it. That's the best way to grow our audience. We really appreciate it.

Melissa:

Indeed. Thanks for listening to the pick place podcast. If you like, what you heard consider following us in your favorite podcast app, and please leave us a review on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from. Thanks

Chris:

so much, everybody.