Hi all! With yesterday's discussion on Polyimide stencils and the associated ESD risk factors (Boy! I gotta admit that I was a little scared..oops after weeks of stencil design and evaluation, and assumption that it is the best we've got, now we end up fighting against ESD..), we decided to run a quick ESD test on our polyimide stencils..and here is what was observed. - The poly stencil, without doubt, is definitely more ESD prone than a metal one. Some places on the stencil was measured holding more than 2000v of charge. But, an interesting observation was that when the stencil is put on the printer and after a run or two, when the charge was measured again, it was very small (around 100v). Something was discharging it and it was not the PC board. So it was a kinda mixed reaction that was observed. We dont want to take the risk of going ahead because, well, sometimes it may happen that the humidity falls, then these stencils would accumulate charges, and oops do i have to tell what'll happen!. We would be printing adhesives using this stencil on the bottom side, with ICs and lotta ESD sensitive stuff on the board. - One of the suggestions were to use an ionic fan (replace the regular fan on the rear of the printer with an ionic one), so that we can be safe from ESD problems, but..i was still kinda worried..and here i am! Any bouncing back of ideas/suggestions...??? Regards, Murugan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com ############################################################## TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ##############################################################