Hi Cheryl!

Your board vendor is right, the amount is so small that I wouldn't sweat it
at all. I've waved thousands of boards without coming even close to the gold
limit.

The only thing I've ever had go out in my wave solder pot is tin...it's
gotten low on me a time or two. I attribute that to running a lot of boards that
have bottomside SMT on them and I've had the turbulent wave on a lot, and also
some overzealous use of Kleenox dross reducer. Need to turn over the metal in
the pot by adding virgin solder on a regular basis, otherwise the solder starts
getting a little "funky"...hey! I just created a new metallurgy term; "funky
solder"....I like the ring of that.  B^}

-Steve Gregory-


> Does anyone have experience with ENIG boards in the wave solder process?
> Do you need to monitor or dump the pot frequently for gold contamination?
> Any other issues?
>
> I have a design with a strip of PTH connectors that aren't currently
> reflow compatible. I have a wave fixture for the PCB that would mask off
> all other gold-exposed areas except for the PTH barrels that need to be
> soldered.
>
> Our PCB supplier believes that the amount of gold drag out would be
> exceedingly small, less than what you would find from a gold-plated part.
>
> Since we haven't tried this yet, I don't know what to expect. I did get 30
> PCBs today to experiment with. Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks, Cheryl
>


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