Doug,

Could the board inadvertantly have shorted out the electrodes of the
chamber?  With some chambers this is quite easy to do if you have large
objects going inside.

My assumption is that you are merely freshening up the surfaces by ...
atomic level ablation and not blasting off copper, etc.

Steve C

On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Douglas Pauls
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Good morning all,
> For those of you who have used plasma etching on circuit assemblies, I
> have a question.  One of our operators observed "sparking" through the
> plasma chamber viewport and a transistor was fried.  Any idea what causes
> this?  First time we have seen this.
>
> Doug Pauls
>
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