I may be late in providing some insight into the results but here goes.

We had a customer who had chip caps crack and it created catastrophic
failures. The subcontractors who were building the product had no idea
regarding thermal profiles and thermal excursions of the products and
components during the manufacturing process.

The bottom line is cracked components impact reliability and in certain
application can cause catastrophic product failures. They should not be
acceptable under any circumstances.

Take a look at all the thermal profiles, heating and cooling. Look at the
handling, look at packaging, look at the placement equipment, measure warp
and twist of incoming boards.
These are just a few, but all are worthwhile to prevent the failure.

Good Luck.

Leo Lambert
EPTAC Corp
[log in to unmask]
www.eptac.com

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Ernie Fung
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 2:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Breaking of capacitor


Greetings to all. We are currently experiencing cracking of the ceramic
capacitors, on both primary and secondary sides of the PWB. The cracks do
not appear to alter the electrical properties (PWBs pass in circuit
testing), but we are concerned with long term reliability. Thermal
profiling of all processes, and copying same in defect lab, has not
reproduced the defect! The cracking appears randomly, and is spread across
several vendors. Any helpful suggestions out there? Thanx for your time.

---------------------------------------------------
Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e
To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in
the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet
To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to
[log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL)
To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to
[log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest
Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives
Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16
for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or
847-509-9700 ext.5315
-----------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------
Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e
To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in
the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet
To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL)
To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest
Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives
Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315
-----------------------------------------------------