You can help yourself two ways by coating the gold contact pads with a
soluble maskant. These are available in both solvent-soluble and
water-soluble types, usually including some optical brighener (OB). The OB
allows for quick 'blacklight' inspection for both coverage and later removal
by the cleaning process.
Not only does the coating protect the gold fingers from picking up solder or
solder specks during processing, it will also pull out many of the
co-deposited non-metal materials that can get trapped during the gold plating
process. The best example I ever saw of this was a '81 Nepcon paper that used
a solvent soluble maskant, showed that contact resistance for the gold
fingers actually dropped significantly after the coating/cleaning process.
(Check with TechSpray in Amarillo, TX; they supply both families of these
maskants.)

Bill Kenyon
Global Centre Consulting
P.O. Box 553, Montchanin, DE 19710 USA
Tel: 302.652.4272     Fax: 302.652.5701   Cell: 302.377.4272
email: [log in to unmask]

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