We all hoped for the best but, as usual, compromises exist with any material selection. Too many uneducated/inexperienced "young" gun designers are getting carried away with Thermount. Most of the designs I work with need not have negative CTE's for anything. Certainly don't need it for leaded devices or BGA's for that matter and hole wall expansion can be accounted for by specifiec plating thickness and adequate ductility. As for the moisture, at .5%, there's no way to use this material with OSP's. As for the prebaking, you're right on here. With OSP's, as one example, it's gone when recommended prebake cycles of about 3 hours are done. This is true notwithstanding the core and preg bake cycles before relamination. Sure would be nice to have the ideal mateerial but, as you say, study what works best for your application. 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 the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------