Hi, All We got a PCB shop to fabricate our new designed board. All issues are solved except the solder mask. The SM appeared to be milky white after went through electroless Ni immersion Au process. Usually delamination would occurred and SM materials looks kind of soft. We suspect SM materials (coat Brothers) giving problem, so we try another SM materials (Taiyo Ink). Trial run with full Cu panel without pattern yield positive result. However when real etch panel is tested, the same issue occurred. After I went through their process flow and found something strange. The electroless Ni took 40 - 60 minutes to achieve 130 u" and 20 -30 minutes for Immersion Au. The bath is having 16g/l Ni and operate at 89 deg. C. At this stage , we think the long exposure time that cause the SM failure. I have a question that I would like to know is whether there is something wrong with the bath and what is the typical time to achieve the same Ni/Au thickness. could someone shed some light over this issue. Any comments is truly welcome. Chong Chee-leong Agilent Technologies ############################################################## 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 ##############################################################