I concur. I was involved in testing in the 80s and 90s testing the different solder mask finishes. Matte finishes clearly had less solder balling. I believe (I am reaching back in the memory banks now) a glossometer reading of less than 60 gave best results. Regards, Bob Metcalf Western Regional Manager Atotech USA Inc 1750 Overview Drive Rock Hill, South Carolina 29730 USA Mobile: 714-334-7667 e-mail: [log in to unmask] Internet: www.atotech.com Managing Director: Kuldip Johal This e-mail and any attachments hereto are business documents of Atotech USA Inc. and may contain CONFIDENTIAL OR PROPRIETARY BUSINESS INFORMATION. Unauthorized disclosure and/or use of information contained in this e-mail are prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, you should dispose of it and not use, disseminate or copy this message or any other files transmitted with it. . From: Lee parker <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Date: 05/04/2010 04:34 PM Subject: Re: [TN] Does solder mask specified create solder balls? Sent by: TechNet <[log in to unmask]> Don Back in the 90s several of us tested the texture of the soldermask is it related to solder balling. The clear result was that the textured soldermask had less tendency to solder ball. Best regards Lee J. L. Parker Ph. D. JLP Consultants LLC 804 779 3389 ----- Original Message ----- From: Don McFarland<mailto:[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 4:19 PM Subject: [TN] Does solder mask specified create solder balls? Hi Technetters, I was asked to perform a DOE to determine if there was a correlation between solder mask types and the rate at which we see solder balls develop on the PWB surface. I searched through the archives and found a few articles from the mid-90s about this topic, but couldn't glean anything exciting from the posts reviewed. I am wondering if anyone knows of a good source of information that addresses this topic or has anything that would be useful for us. We have made a number of changes to other process variables (e.g. stencil apertures, solder pastes, paste viscosity, profiles, etc) and have seen good results, but we wanted to rule this out as a causal factor as well. Any help is greatly appreciated! Don McFarland ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. 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For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ --------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------