Sure. Why not? They have that goal to cut costs....... Do you keep track of quality issues for circuit board suppliers? Every time a PWB fails receiving inspection (or anywhere else in the process) an Non-conforming Material report should be written. Keep track of all of the NCMs. Keep track of all of the hours spent in rework hours, your time, purchasing time, supply line engineer's time, time spent re-ordering replacement boards, re-receiving them, re-inspecting them, re-stocking them, scrap costs for PWBs, etc. and then add those costs back into the total amount spent on circuit boards at the end of the year. Go back over all of the SCARs issued to that vendor. Insist that that amount be removed from whatever "savings" were realized by your purchasing department going to cheapo vendors. Compare these numbers with the "good" fabricators. Run it up the flagpole, issue reports to your company's top management, etc. As Dewey would say, this type of good behavior shall not go unpunished. -----Original Message----- From: Pete Houwen [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 2:46 PM To: [log in to unmask]; Stadem, Richard D. Subject: Re: looking for ENiG photos We put a lot of money and effort into material and finish selections in the RoHS chageover. We have strict specifications on our fabrication drawings. We have previously fully qualified 3 high volume and 2 prototype PCBs, and maintain them in a world wide AVL. but purchasing sees pennies............. This is just a proposed vendor - only sample quantites assembled, we haven't ordered anything yet (I hope). So far the proposed vendor has: claimed to be a fabricator, but is actually a broker fabricated at two shops, neither was included in the site visits or D&Bs switched the laminate we approved (twice) changed layer spacing used some alien plating material performed microsectioning and solder testing on a non-RoHS PCB, but shipped a completely different (hopefully RoHS) panel The other (passed) microsection showed innerlayer separation. Shipped PCBs with soldermask on pads. Best scenario is that this finally wakes purchasing up to what I've been telling them about buying boards in China. Worst case is - they buy these anyway. --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 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 -----------------------------------------------------