The gold plating is there to protect the underlying copper (nickel): It
is there to insure that the basis metal remains solderable.
You are seeing poor vertical fill? Sounds like it did not do its job.
This is a cause for concern.
There are other possible causes for poor vertical fill. The long term
reliability of the board should be questioned.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marie Magnin
> Sent: Monday, January 13, 2003 9:01 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [TN] voids in gold plated holes
>
>
> Dear TECHNETers,
>
> It is my first post to this list, please forgive me if I ask
> an already posted question, but I could not find any answer
> to my problem.
>
> We have received, populated and soldered a set of 50 boards
> which have voids in the gold plating layer into holes (either
> PTH and via holes). We have discovered the problem because of
> a poor vertical fill of the holes at wave soldering.
>
> Is there any standard for this parameter ? Neither IPC nor
> PERFAG mention anything about this, they just state on copper plating.
>
> Is there any risk of corrosion in the future for these boards
> ? (they will be installed in factories, means in "standard"
> environnement in terms of humidity and temperature ) If yes,
> how would you prevent it ? ( we cannot post solder the holes,
> because of the large quantity of these and also because many
> of them are hidden under SMD part; I would personnaly would
> use conformal coating)
>
> Many thanks for your help and kind regards
>
> Marie Magnin
> QA Manager
> FIRSTEC SA
> Rue du Grand Pré 70
> CH 1211 Genève 2
> Tél : +41(0)22 918 36 85
> Fax : +41(0)22 918 36 93
> mailto:[log in to unmask]
> http://www.firstec.ch
>
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>

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