Peter, Removing inner pads and using the newly found area is certain death. I have a fellow FAE that does a seminar on the error of blindly removing pads to gain trace area. Less than .001 average wall thickness on a conventional PTH in a Military PWB is death. Aspect ratio's of 7/1 are much much more reliable than this pad removal scheme and allowing less than the .001 PTH wall thickness. The PTH thickness plays with aspect ratio; to the extent that .0007 will work for MicroVia, but the Z axis is from .002 to .005. That is a big difference. Finally in reference to pad deletion your better off making the entire board tougher to fab with smaller pads than to arbitrarily delete and bump traces. Boston Brad 781 858 0783 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------