DEK Typhoon Cleaner
Maintaining the cleanliness of a stencil while printing is critical functionality for a stencil printer, indeed it is practically unheard of for a solder-paste SMT process to be effective without one. Printers sold without cleaners are almost exclusively used in screen-printing processes. The original 265 printer (1993) had a stencil cleaner that later became known as the ‘silver’ cleaner when a new ‘blue’ cleaner was introduced on the DEK 265GSX in the late nineties.
This design carried forward onto the Infinity range, and then to Galaxy and Horizon printers. In 2006 the Cyclone cleaner was developed that added new features such as the ability to clean with vacuum in both directions, interchangeable chambers for different fabric widths, oscillation of the chamber, fabric advance while cleaning and offline fabric changeover. In 2016, all but the largest (580mm) blue cleaner was replaced by the iUSC with interchangeable cleaning head inserts for different fabric sizes.
This contributed to the success of the Horizon 8 range of printers that could then be built to stock and configured on delivery with the correct insert. In the same year, the Duo chamber range was released for the Cyclone cleaner, in some cases halving the time spent cleaning.
In 2019 the DEK TQ printer was launched, adding a fourth type of cleaner to the range. As a ground-up redesign, the printer allowed more space for the cleaner, meaning it contains a 22m
long roll instead of 11m on the other cleaners, doubling the time between fabric replenishment.
Now the choice of cleaners will be updated once more as the Cyclone is replaced by the new Typhoon USC. This combines the advantages of iUSC-style inserts with design mprovements that increase MTBA and MTBF, as well as aligning functionality with the TQ cleaner. A 620mm variant also replaces the blue 580mm cleaner, giving full width cleaning for long-oardenabled printers and removing the Blue cleaner from all.
This leaves the following high-end printing USC variants:
- iUSC with cleaning widths of 300mm, 400mm and 520mm
- Typhoon with cleaning widths of 300mm, 400mm, 460mm, 515mm and 620mm
- TQ USC with a cleaning width of 400mm
