Steve I am not a user but already 5 years ago we made trials with SIPAD and I was impressed, how easy it was to work with that system. We made 50 boards where we placed QFP's with pitch 0.3mm and BGA's with pitch 0.5mm and it was a peace of cake to place these components with a placement machine that was designed for pitch 0.75mm. We also could assemble the boards by hand. As a matter of fact I am trying to get some boards with lead-free deposits. The one drawback I was told of is the fact that the sticky flux becomes kind of liquid at elevated temperature. One company told me that a container stood in the sone for a weekend and the flux was smeared all over the PCB's. Apart from that I believe solid solder deposition is a great way to produce SMT. Have a great day Guenter EMPA Swiss Federal Institute for Materials Testing and Research Centre for Reliability Guenter Grossmann, Senior Enineer 8600 Duebendorf Switzerland Phone: xx41 1 823 4279 Fax : xx41 1823 4054 mail: [log in to unmask] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------