Paul, You're not going to find any information on statistical occurrences of Black-Pad events. Those that have had them don't want to talk about them. It's almost impossible to quantify how prevalent the problem is. Certainly if your board fabricator does a poor job of controlling ENIG you'll see more occurrences. I know of three occurrences of Black-Pad in my former company (Lucent) over a five year period and one occurrence in my current company (Andrew) in the past three years. If I were to take the number of occurrences and divide by the number of boards the prevalence would be well down in the noise. However, when your customer finds out that his customer's communications or internet system when down because a component fell off your board, your customer gets emotional and that one event is too much. If you haven't experienced that one event yet it's hard to believe that immersion silver is a better way to go. I'm biased. Eight years ago I believed that immersion silver was a better way to go to insure reliability and product quality and our experience has substantiated that belief. There are two kinds of immersion silver users that I know of. One kind has done their homework and decided that immersion silver works and the other kind of immersion silver user is they type that just can't stand another Black-Pad event. Regards, George George M. Wenger Andrew Corporation 40 Technology Drive, Warren, NJ 07059 (908) 546-4531 [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Truit Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 10:03 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Black Pad Prevalence I have searched the archives and have found lot's of good info but nothing in regard to the prevalence or the statistical occurrences of this event. I have run tens of thousands of ENIG boards and I haven't observed this defect but I am concerned enough to ask. Is this a board fabricator controllable issue that has been minimized? Have you observed this phenomenon? How often will this occur? Is immersion silver the better way to go to assure the reliability and quality of the products? -- Paul Truit, Mfg. Eng. RBB Systems, Inc. 4265C E. Lincolnway Wooster, OH 44691 Ph. (330) 567-2906 ext 514 Fax (330) 263-5324 Email: [log in to unmask] --------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message is for the designated recipient only and may contain privileged, proprietary, or otherwise private information. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the original. Any unauthorized use of this email is prohibited. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [mf2] --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------