Hi Iain, Wether it's true that you don't have to mask anymore depends very much on the design of the product and the quality standards that must be met. We have a Nordson/Asymtek slective spray coating machine and still need to do manual masking (although it's much less than with dip coating) and manual "painting" afterwards to reach the areas that we could not do with the machine (while at the same time keeping other areas free of coating). The problem is not so much the machine's accuracy, but the flowing behaviour of the liquid sprayed onto the board. This is quite complex as it depends on the topography of the bare board and on how the fluid flows from the topsides off the components onto the board surface. Only if your boards are designed with this process in mind, and you don't require 100% coverage of the top and sides of all the parts, and you don't care about a few tracks that are not covered with coating, you'll have the maximum savings. Daan Terstegge Thales Communications Unclassified mail Personal Website: http://www.smtinfo.net >>> [log in to unmask] 02/16/04 10:54am >>> Gents, I'm looking to replace an existing dip conformal coating m/c. We're a low/medium volume military establishment that spends an awful lot of time masking up various boards. I once saw a spray coating m/c in operation (several years ago!) and it looked pretty slick, the engineer stated that manual masking was redundant as the operation was carried out modifying the CAM data. If I remember correctly the equipment was supposed to be accurate to ~1mm during the spraying operation, is this correct / typical? I'm looking for the pro's & con's of these systems, approximate cost of one of these was bearing in mind through put is not an issue & suppliers, ideally in the UK but not tied to this. CIA, Iain. ******************************************************************** This email and any attachments are confidential to the intended recipient and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender. You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or distribute its contents to any other person. ******************************************************************** --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a 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/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a 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/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 -----------------------------------------------------