Dear Technetters, I don't know if this is a problem that only we have, but it involves Styrofoam packing beads that show up on the PCB's that are delivered to our lines. The little beads are all over the plastic packaging of the individual PCB bundles, and these can eventually hitchhike onto a PCB that goes into the printer. You can guess what happens - a bead ends up on a pad or in an aperture and the result is insufficient or missing solder on one or many boards. Our supplier is in China or India, and they claim that they must use Styrofoam for packaging. In my opinion, this is the wrong type of packaging to use, but because of the low "initial" cost, I don't have too much clout on this issue. Is anyone else familiar with this problem? Thanks in advance for all of your opinions - they are helpful and very valuable to my job! Howard Watson SMT Manufacturing Engineer --------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------- AMETEK/Dixson