Marie, Welcome to TechNet! Although no expert, my reaction is that voids in the goldplating would not, in itself, cause poor vertical fill in the holes. The gold should burn off during soldering and wetting should be to the underlying Nickel (presumably this is an ENIG board). It seems to me that the problem is either with the underlying copper plating or else the Nickel layer plated onto that. Have you done any cross-sections of affected areas? Some questions: 1. What are the diameters and aspect ratios of the affected holes? If the aspect ratio is too great and/or the hole diameter too small, plating thickness half way down the hole is affected, especially with small-diameter holes. 2. What is the target gold plating thickness? If it's too thick, that may have some bearing on the problem you're seeing. If it's too thin, and you have Nickel plating underneath, you may have porous gold that has allowed the Nickel to oxidise. This would cause poor wetting and so the solder might not rise properly. 3. What flux was used to assemble the boards? Maybe you need to try a slightly more aggressive one. I'm not well up on fluxes, so can't make any recommendations, but I'm sure others can. 4. Is it only the holes that are affected, or is the soldering quality of other parts of the boards less than ideal also? We need a few more clues to give a better answer. Peter Marie Magnin <[log in to unmask]> 13/01/2003 10:01 PM Sent by: TechNet <[log in to unmask]> Please respond to "TechNet E-Mail Forum."; Please respond to Marie Magnin To: [log in to unmask] cc: (bcc: DUNCAN Peter/Asst Prin Engr/ST Aero/ST Group) Subject: [TN] voids in gold plated holes Dear TECHNETers, It is my first post to this list, please forgive me if I ask an already posted question, but I could not find any answer to my problem. We have received, populated and soldered a set of 50 boards which have voids in the gold plating layer into holes (either PTH and via holes). We have discovered the problem because of a poor vertical fill of the holes at wave soldering. Is there any standard for this parameter ? Neither IPC nor PERFAG mention anything about this, they just state on copper plating. Is there any risk of corrosion in the future for these boards ? (they will be installed in factories, means in "standard" environnement in terms of humidity and temperature ) If yes, how would you prevent it ? ( we cannot post solder the holes, because of the large quantity of these and also because many of them are hidden under SMD part; I would personnaly would use conformal coating) Many thanks for your help and kind regards Marie Magnin QA Manager FIRSTEC SA Rue du Grand Pr¨¦ 70 CH 1211 Gen¨¨ve 2 T¨¦l : +41(0)22 918 36 85 Fax : +41(0)22 918 36 93 mailto:[log in to unmask] http://www.firstec.ch --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e 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 or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) 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 ----------------------------------------------------- [This e-mail is confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify us immediately; you should not copy or use it for any purpose, nor disclose its contents to any other person. Thank you.]