Hi ya'll!

Well, I'm making some progress about this mask flaking deal. So I thought I'd 
share what I've learned thus far. To refresh, I have a board here that loses 
all it's mask off of every bit of copper after 3-4 washes in a Electrovert 
MCS-1000 cleaner that we run Kyzen Aquanox XJN in at a 30% concentration. The 
board is assembled with RMA based flux, that's why the Kyzen. The wash is 
140º F., and the rinse is 120º F. 

The fab vendor says it's our cleaning process that's doing it, but I first 
contended that it's either the mask, or the masking process. They came back 
and pointed out that we're assembling 3 other boards with dryfilm mask, so 
why isn't there problems with the other 3 assemblies? So I says; 
hmmmm...(babbling to myself as usual...hehehe) 

There is one difference between the flakey board and the other three, the 
flakey board is a PCI card that has gold plated fingers while the other 3 
doesn't have any gold plated on them at all... 

But I went back in the stockroom and looked at the bare fabs of the other 3, 
and could obviously see that a different brand dryfilm mask had been used 
with them.
After a conference call today with the fab vendor, we did find out that there 
WAS two different masks being used. I'm not trying to slam any mask over the 
other, just relating my experiences, but the flakey mask is a DynaChem KM, 
and the other is a Dupont 8140. They said they would switch over to the 
Dupont mask....(I'm thinkin' to myself, WHY didn't they do that months ago 
when all this started? Especially since they built 3-different lots of boards 
with the DynaChem mask after first receiving the first complaints? They had 
at least TWO chanches to switch! But nooooo...)

The $30,000 dollars we got into components and assembly labor on boards that 
have bare-naked traces and vias is still being contested, because they said 
they complied with the drawing since no certain mask was specified, just the 
IPC spec, basically  saying that's it's our problem we use Kyzen Aquanox XJN. 
Sounds kinda' lame to me, but thank goodness at least I'm outta that loop!

Least now I know what kinda dryfilm mask NOT to use with Kyzen (I'd rather 
not have to deal with dryfilm at all, but whatcha gonna do?)

-Steve Gregory-

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