Gary,

I’ve heard that it can have an effect, but I’ve not seen anything that shows
a profound difference.  However, if you’re having open traces on every hand
soldered board, then I would believe that you have some other issue going
on.  Have you verified that your opens are with your plated thru-holes?
Also, I recommend this question to TechNet.

William W. Gilman, CID
2827 Valley View Dr.
Knoxville, TN 37917
ph. 865-524-8679
fax 865-524-8679
cell 865-368-0665
email:[log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: DesignerCouncil [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Bremer,
Gary
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002 10:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [DC] High Performance Electronic Design

I am forwarding this question from one of the design engineers at work.  We
advertise we build class 3 products, but with all of our thick boards, we
get open traces whenever a hand soldering operation is required.  We just
found out that one of our board vendors has been removing all the unused
pads on the inner layers without out knowledge.  The board type we generally
use for our backplanes is type 3c per IPC-2222.
Does getting rid of unused pads on all inner layers have any profound affect
on the PHT barrel integrity especially with high layer count / thick circuit
boards?
Thanks for your help,
Gary Bremer
Manufacturing Engineer
Phone (626) 449-3090 ext. 219