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Moisture sensitive devices? True or not?

Posted by Fabio Varesano on October 30, 2010 at 10:48am

Hi all,

I ordered some ADXL345, HMC5843 and ITG-3200 .. all off them are marked as moisture sensitive devices. On the specs they say that they can get damaged after opening the moisture protective bag.. They say that once opened they would have a life of ~ 160 hours..

Is that true? If so, why they don't moisture break when soldered on a PCB?
If once opened the moisture protective bag do you think they could get damaged if I store them in a dry place at 25 degrees C?

Thanks,

FV

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adxl345, hmc5843, itg-3200, moisture

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Replies

Ken October 30, 2010 at 11:45am

Once they are soldered to a board, moisture does not matter, because they (hopefully) will not be soldered again.

What happens is that you open the bag, and moisture from the air (slowly) gets into the device. When you put the part on a board and put the board in the oven to melt the solder, that trapped moisture turns to steam and the component explodes. So, you keep the parts in their dry bags until you are ready to manufacture the board.