We routinely print glue on unpopulated locations for ourselves and our customers.  And, truth be known, your inspector is probably complaining because she/he keeps thinking that parts are missing from the assembly.  Boy, with an AOI system you could just tell it "that's okay" and be about your business.

Paul has described probably the only scenario where the extra dots would be offensive, i.e., PIA for the customer.  From the replies you received on your related thread, printing extra dots on multirevison PWBs could be considered undocumented industry practice.  Doing otherwise would cost the customer extra tooling and setup charges.  In most cases is not an expense the customer wants to incur.  But, since this practice is apparently undocumented (no industry spec) I guess its something else I need to iron out with the individual customers. Usually our first pieces for a customer get scrutinized by them and I would expect them to let me know of their concerns at that time, but we know what can happen when we ass u me to much.

However, I can't really argue with Hal's approach -if you can't show me its illegal, then it must be legal.  If silk screening were involved , should I assume we are to leave off the legends for the unpopulated parts?

Ramblings by,
Gary Camac

Steve Gregory wrote:

This is just a general question to OEM companies from a CEM point of view; would you expect a call from your supplier if it was noticed by them, that there were some component locations that are not installed, to ask if it was okay to either print solder paste, or deposit epoxy at those locations even if there was no component installed?

What if they stopped production until they got a answer from you? Would that be okay?

Just wondering if I'm missing something...

-Steve Gregory-