Excelbond Metal Recycling Industries Sdn Bhd is the Malaysia’s leading service provider for the purchase and collection of all grades of solder dross. Since 1989, the majority of Malaysia based electronic production factories have been looked after by Excelbond. With the benefits of London Metal Exchange linked prices, and our free national collection service all producers are now able to ensure they continually get the very best returns on their solder dross. While solder paste is a widely used form of solder, but when it comes to recycling only the experts will do. Excelbond Metal Recycling Industries Sdn Bhd have developed a process that enables the both the recovered paste and the plastic to be recycled. This process has proved so successful that manufactures of solder paste themselves now have their scrap solder paste recycled through Excelbond.

Wave Soldering has been around for a long time and although it has become more effective and more efficient as a process, one thing hasn't changed much, in that most solder machines generate a high amount of dross. In fact, on average some 75% of the solder in the bath oxidizes over time to become dross which has traditionally been dumped into a bucket and disposed of as scrap.

Reducing the solder dross has not been a high priority for most busy production engineers. And over the years its low level in the pecking order has resulted in minimum attention paid to the environmental issues of lead oxides from the solder and the financial consequences of large amounts of untreated dross.

Metal dealers and solder suppliers have however a different perspective. They know that dross is almost entirely made up of pure solder and if they can get it back they can cheaply reprocess it and sell it back to users. As only 25% of what they sell ends up on the boards at any one time they can effectively sell the same solder four times over.

The task of de-drossing is carried out with varying degrees of thoroughness. Those in a hurry often put as much solder as dross into the scrap bucket. On the other hand, those who have time to spare, may manually squeeze the dross through a perforated ladle, breaking down the crusty oxide coating to release some of the trapped solder back into the bath, before placing the residue into the bucket. However, even this process which extends the wave down time still results in a minimum amount of solder being recovered and takes vital time away from production.

Health and safety regulations however, are continually pushing back the levels of previously acceptable practices to improve working conditions. When dross is being manually squeezed there is a greater chance that these dangerous substances can be released into the workplace and particularly affects the operators squeezing the dross.