Jim, BGA's used to be my best friend, except for Arleen Weinberger and other ladies of extreme beauty and brains. Now they are a bain, if tha's a proper term. It's like the whole BGA world has gone to hell. Even board suppliers are starting to suck who once had my total faith and confidence based on constant evaluation, re-evaluation, and qualification. At least now I have a compadre in this mess. Thanks for sharing the gief but I'm honestly stumped but for an undying dedication to gettin this damn thing resolved. The TI thing was bad enough but now another major supplier adds to the MESS. Did you give us your paper and/or its location? I'm reading all I can, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, notwithstanding posting my brains and guts out on this site. Hell, even Sir Werner and his cohorts can't do much. It has to be up to the suppliers to come forth. Thought I was working concurrently with TI. Now I'm not sure again, and haven't even begun talking with the other major supplier with whom my last pics are associated. Your statement about "Every time there was a component failure, it was attributed to an open BGA solder joint" sure used to ring true but was resolved, for a time. It seems now to be coming back. Sorry about your, hopefully healed black eye, but should not have been the case. However, some should suffer such a fate based on your thoughts about how the missing ball attachment area looked compared to mine. This solder "remnant" crap is exactly my problem and others soon to experience it. All other surface conditions point to some process management inadequacies and someone knows what they are and what are the failure modes/mechanisms. Just looks like unsolderable surfaces to me and whatever happened to the IMC layer whether too thick, too thin, or just plane way to oxidized. My progress is limited to a very small company resource capability. The company has spent way too much time and money doing minimal analysis. Who the hell could afford to do more anyway. Like Sir Werner says, this crap is just being thrown over the fence for all us ROOKIES to suck through a garden hose. I don't do that. I believe you're right about the nickel gold thing. What else could it be. TI even admitted one of its suppliers was replaced to do a better job. That hasn't been proven yet either. Maybe Friday it will when we get our first assemblies. We'll ge to the bottom, and I do mean bottom, of this soon but maybe not soon enough for some. Thanks JM for some outstanding insights. Finally feels a bit, though sadly, comforting having someone else having gone through this. Earl --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------