Hello,

My design engineers currently use a large amount of soldermask defined pads
in ground planes for RF boards. Based on discussions with my fabricator and
our assembly manufacturing folks, we'd like to get rid of designs like this
and use spoked thermal ties to ground instead. My RF engineers, however,
have concerns about doing this and losing material in their connection. Does
anyone have guidelines for boards like this? I guess I'd be interested in
hearing both sides: from the fabricator or assembler, how much material
would we need to remove from a connection to a pad to affect the
manufacturability; from the designer, how much material are you willing to
have removed without sacrificing any functionality.

Thanks for the help,
Matt

Matthew Sanders
PWB Procurement Engineer, Trimble Navigation Limited
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