The banding probably does not come from the pulse plating, banding is often seen in nickel plating without pulse plating and was quire common in the days of pyrophoshate copper plating also without pulse plating . Overdosing of some additive/leveler.brighteners will cause banding even in acid copper plate The banding due to bath chemistry is seen most often as 6 to 15 bands in about 1.5 mils. of plating. It is most prevalent at the corners of the holes and these corners often crack when subjected solder float testing. The cause of the banding is the reneucleation of the plating several times during the plating process, eah reneucleation cause a new band . It most often occurs with overdosing brighteners or by running the bath too long with out treatment or cleanup. Banding due to pulse plating is often not detectable as it would happen at about 100-300 bands in the the 1.5 mils of plating. . Phil Hinton Hinton PWB Engineering --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------