Hi Phil! May I ask for you to tell me exactly what you have as "Tip Cutters"? This is good information. We have manual lead trimmers here, but it seemed to me, doing that was transmitting force down to the solder connection. I observed fractured solder joints when I tried cutting the tie-bars off. As a point, even when we separated the tie-bar cleanly without obvious damage, we would re-reflow the joints to be sure that we that we healed any fractures that might not be visible. This was done prior to temp cycling, because I was still concerned about what it took to remove the tie bars. This stuff is fun...ain't it Phil? -Steve Gregory- hi, we hot bar soldered these connectors (b3) and used the tie bar to lift the leads onto the lrm pad patterns. after soldering, we cut them off with 'tip' cutters. our operators are outstanding and, to my knowledge, never damaged the solder joints. our first approach was to leave the non-conductive tie bar on. the first z-axis vibe test taught us that that was a bad idea. we then used the tie bar to flex the tails up and down to break it off. again, a real bad idea. the cutters did the job for us. phil --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------