Am I cranky today; or was that post too preachy. -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Rick Fudalewski Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 2:49 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] OSP i've been reading postings on the net for the last few days and it appears to me that the people involved in the FAB process that are on the net are either not responding or looking for work - perhaps? all these finishes - silver - tin - osp - eng - they all have their place and application. in today's market they are all approved processes for surface finishes - replacing HASL in one way or another. i am sure a company has a preferred finish over the others for one reason or another. in reading your postings - at times it appears that many of you just haven't done your homework - for whatever reason. without asking millions of questions - i think it was Earl who hit the nail right on the head - they work - period!!!! why some have failure with one and not the other - when i read - seems like either the application was wrong - the boards weren't properly processed by the fabricator - or as i mentioned - you haven't done your homework before you started having the surface finish applied. there has been copious amounts of literature floating around for the last decade - silver - nor tin - nor OSP - or ENG - is preffered one over the other. they all work. someone mentioned ENG is boring - so it'll be replaced by silver - if i were in their shoes - i'd look at the application first - like i previously stated - they all have their places as a surface finish. if silver is to replace ENG as a surface finish - then whomever speced ENG on that board in the first place - didn't do their homework. OSP - TIN - SILVER - can all be used as HASL replacements - depending on what the criteria is - but to date - i haven't seen one of them replace ENG nor Deep Bodied Ni/AU - unless - one of those two finishes shouldn't have been speced in to begin with. regards Rich Fudalewski FCT