Baseline profiles are used purely for set-up purposes. They are manually-fed into the reflow oven and are run in tandem with a monitoring system in order to create what is called a “virtual profile.” Baseline profiles, thus, become the standard by which all automated profiles are compared. If there are any deviations between the baseline profile and the automated profile, this information is recorded and can trigger alarms and stop production temporarily. Baseline profiles also have the added advantage of becoming a true “gold standard” for all of your profiles, since the same profiling board is not being used repeatedly or subject to degradation of the PCB, thermocouples or operator error.
The set-up of a baseline profile is performed by running a normal profile, per recipe. Meanwhile, 1-2 fixed mounted probes (typical an array of 15-30 thermocouples) collect their own set of data as the PCB runs the length of the Reflow oven with a profiler. This information is then compared and processed by the monitoring system. This array of internally-mounted thermocouples is able to reconstruct a virtual model of a profile. When a production board enters, without the profiler, the same TC readings that were present when your oven was profiled are now re-mapped onto each and every PCB.
