Hi Prashant, It's been a few years since we processes gold finger boards, but when we did we covered the fingers with Kapton tape prior to delivering the PWBs to the assembly areas. The tape was applied either by the PWB vendor or in a prepping area and remained on the boards throughout all assembly operations (double-sided SMT reflow + wave solder) which included occasional cleaning (IPA and/or EC-7 (citrus extract based) spray) of solder paste on mis-printed boards. The tape was removed after all assembly operations, the gold fingers were then cleaned (IPA I believe) and then lubricated (paraffin wax solution) prior to shipping. As we never experienced systematic pitting problems as you describe, I suspect that your problem may be with the plating itself or perhaps improper taping. Howard A. Cyker Lucent Technologies Engineering Infrastructure - New Product Engineering Email [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Prashant Chopra [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 2:59 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] problem with gold pads of the pcb hi all, we are using gold finger pads on the pcb. but after going thru smt process of screen printing,component insertion, reflow and aqueous wash we are facing the problem of grey color dots on the pads. This problem is with the pads where no components are being placed. There is no solder paste printing on these pads nor any components are place there and they are being covered with Kapton tape thru out the above process. Can anyone point to some reasons for this problem????? --------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------