Stuart, Your last question says it all. What's a guy to do? There's little to do after assembly but trying to get your board fabricator to fess up and pay for the problem. Meanwhile, you've lost a customer. If the boards were not assembled, you could send them back and have them solder coated/leveled and go on from there. You could remove all the parts and do the same thing - bad suggestion. What's a guy to do? You can't section all the holes affected and determine if they even come close to whatever acceptability criteria of the day. You could go back to your customer and see if it will buy off on the boards if they meet electrical test requirements - for this lot only of course. Naturally, you need to assure the customer that this will never happen again because you have re-evaluated your supplier and it has initiated corrective and future preventive action so this does not happen again. If these were SMT pads only, reliability isn't even an issue, nor is initial quality after solder attempts. Nothing solders to black pads. Tough place to be and what's a guy to do? Feel for you and all involved, Earl Moon --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------