Steve, This sounds excessive to me. A good, clean interleaf paper is all that I ask for to prevent burnishing damage from one board to the next. We will perform plasma cleaning prior to wire bonding, but that is because other operations have been done upstream [in-house]. I would do this even if the vendor plasma cleaned the boards. You/they could always do a wetting angle test to see just how 'clean' the boards actually were upon arrival - comparing against those that had not been plasma pre-cleaned... Steve Creswick - Gentex -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Steve Kelly Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:18 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Wire bondable gold pads Good Morning to all, We manufacture various circuits with electroplated wire bondable gold. As the final operation before packaging and shipping we plasma clean. Our customer is under the impression that the gold can contaminate during shipping and storage. My question is do other suppliers do special nitrogen/vacuum packaging of product like this to prevent this or is this something that should not be happening. Thanks in advance. Steve Kelly Steve Kelly PH: (416) 750-8433 FAX: (416) 750-0016 CELL: (416) 577-8433 --------------------------------------------------- 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 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- 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 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------