Mathematical Modeling of Thermal Behavior of PCBs in a Modular Magazine Convection Oven

During Printed Circuit Board (PCB) production, the curing represents a main crucial process to ensure the specified quality of the PCBs. A recently introduced new technique of a modular magazine convection oven not only allows to decouple the main PCB production process from the curing process, it also ensures relatively precise control of the PCBs temperatures during curing. An essential element of this innovative control system is the mathematical modeling of the thermal conditions within the oven chamber and, specifically, of the temperature behavior of the individual PCBs. This article describes the physical-mathematical basics, the principal computational implementation and simulation results of this model, together with an indication of its specific function. The heat transfer and control via the convection of the heated airflow, together with the thermal conduction within the PCBs, determine the temperature behavior of the PCBs, whereas heat transfer by thermal radiation provides a minor contribution only.