Kevin, I will throw in my two cents worth. We do not wear gloves in our facilities for most of the manufacturing process. They do in the clean rooms and they do after final wash prior to conformal coat. The rest of the time it is, in my opinion, a waste of time and money. Kind of an odd statement coming from me, but here is why I think so. Gloves are there to prevent finger salts and oils from getting on the assembly, where they would be a contamination risk. Our cleaning processes are such that the last cleaning step is a mild one designed to remove such salts and oils. The heavier residues have already been removed in previous process steps. So, gloves are not really needed. Here is why I think it is a waste of money to have gloves on anywhere earlier in the process. The assumption that gloves keep your assemblies clean is only true while the gloves themselves are clean. Run your gloved hands through your hair. New gloves. Touch a little of that uncured adhesive. New gloves. Get a little flux from hand soldering on the gloves. New gloves. You think that the operators are going to change gloves that often? No. Think the manager for that area is going to willingly pay for the truckloads of new gloves. Hell no. In some of our areas, the operators that apply silicone RTV adhesive to the boards wear gloves because that RTV is hard to get off your hands. Think they change them often? Nope. When the boards get to conformal coating, there are lots of dewet areas that mysteriously resemble fingerprint sized areas, but without the convenient identifying fingerprints. Even though we stress to our operators to handle boards by the edges only, it is sometimes just not practical to do so. Then again, since we have that final clean prior to coating, it is not as critical. Now, if you are a true no-clean facility, that is another issue. If you go the route of gloves, I would recommend you stay away from finger cots and plastic gloves. They are uncomfortable and when you make the operators uncomfortable, bad things happen. I would highly recommend the use of HyFlex gloves, which you can get from Techni-Tool. These are cotton gloves with heavier rubberized palms and fingers, but the back sides of the fingers and back side of the hand are open cotton, allowing the gloves to breathe. Very comfortable, good tactical feel to them and the surface is robust enough that you can clean off residues with mild alcohol so they last for a long time. They cost a little more, but they are worth the investment considering their cleanability and how long they last. Doug Pauls Rockwell Collins Kevin Glidden <[log in to unmask]> Sent by: TechNet <[log in to unmask]> 03/04/2009 07:26 AM Please respond to TechNet E-Mail Forum <[log in to unmask]>; Please respond to Kevin Glidden <[log in to unmask]> To [log in to unmask] cc Subject [TN] Gloved Hands / Fingerprints / Failure Articles Hello everyone, We are in the midst of a proposal from myself and manufacturing engineering to require use of gloves or finger cots throughout our PCB assembly process. We had considered that it really would only be required after final cleaning, but for uniformity would require it all steps including population. We have of course met with a real resistance, particularly from the final assemblers who are stating it doesn't matter once the conformal coat is on. I can see at least some logic in that, and admittedly a large portion of our argument is aesthetics (we don't want fingerprints on the boards even after coating), but it would be really nice to have some sort of scare tactic, like an article or something that related a PCB failure to fingerprints or handling contamination. Anyone have such a thing? Thanks! --------------------------------------------------- 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 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------