Hi Matthew-
Never saw a reply to this so I'll give it a go. My advice is; if your
volumes are at all significant, don't do the by-hand or pliers thing unless
you can lay the board out such that components, solder joints, and small
traces, are REALLY far away from the breakaways. Especially X7R caps. We
recently saw a problem where a cap more than 5MM from a breakaway sometimes
cracked even though we were using special tooling for singulation. Turned
out that it was happening during ICT due to flexing. Easy to fix at the ICT
process but points out the potential for problems associated with breakaway
tabs.

Low tech material like CEM-1 will often delaminate badly around the
breakaway if done by hand (or pliers).

We use punch and/or shear tooling, routers, or Vscore, but all our stuff is
pretty high volume.

Lastly, I've never seen a plated hole used on a breakaway tab.
Regards,
-Chris




                      Matthew Lamkin
                      <matthew.lamkin@PR         To:      [log in to unmask]
                      OTEC.CO.UK>                cc:
                      Sent by:                   Subject: [DC] How to break of IPC mousebyte
                      DesignerCouncil            breakaways ??
                      <DesignerCouncil@I
                      PC.ORG>


                       06/24/02 06:02 AM
                       Please respond to
                             "(Designers
                        Council Forum)";
                       Please respond to
                          Matthew Lamkin






HI there, can someone tell me please what is the best way to depanel a
board
that uses the
IPC-782-3-31 Mousbyte breakaway?

Is there a specific machine to do this or is it a case of a pair of
Pliers/grips to snap it off?

How "low stress" is this feature?

Does "Thru XX PL" mean that they are to be NOT plated holes?

Thankyou;
Matthew Lamkin.

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