LOL Werner, I totally understand where you are coming from. As a process engineer, you should see how much hell I need to go through to verify that the root cause of the solder reliability issues is not the process but the pwb finish, or issues related to it. And identifying surface finish problems is not easy, nor cheap. We usually need to go to an outside failure analysis house to get verification. This is very costly. Thus I also have a somewhat biased opinion towards ENIG using standard 63/37 solder. And as you pointed out, Werner, the lead-free alloys combined with ENIG makes the situation potentially much worse. With ENIG, some of the plating issues are exacerbated by further thermal cycles during normal processing. This is why it is difficult to prove "is it the plating, or is it the process". There quite often are situations where it is a little of both. When I am working with military hardware (or really, any electronic assemblies), the last thing I want to take a chance on is solder reliability issues with the board finish that go undetected until hundreds or even thousands of assemblies are built and in the field. Because of ENIG's fickle nature, and because I do not like to solder to nickel for all of the reasons that are well documented here in the forum archives and hundreds of white papers, articles, and so forth, I simply try to stay away from it whenever possible. Why would I ever need to use it, except for in certain situations and space applications where it is not qualified? And Gerard, I want you to understand I respect your knowledge and opinions fully, I simply choose to disagree with you on this. -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Werner Engelmaier Sent: Friday, May 12, 2006 1:15 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Question about ENIG in SnPb process . . . . Thanks Lee, Richard & Daniel,for backing up my experience. Gerard, of course, as a consultant clients come to you when they have problems, not when everything works as advertised. So, purely statistically, consultants get a one-sided picture. As a consultant, one of your first obligations is to do no harm with our advice [sort of like physicians]-having seen what I have, there is no way I can advise a client in favor of ENIG. Of course it works most of the time, but God help me i advice ENIG to a client and all hell breaks loose. Werner --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------