Ann, You may not love my opinion. Personally, I think that the beta or whatever thickness testing is not telling much about the wetting and final solder joint quality. Instead one should rely upon a solder wetting (balance) testing combined with solder ball shear tests. Depending on what customer you have, there may be necessary with even more tests, e.g. tempcycling and ageing tests with X-sectioning and SEM/EDX. But there are simpler ways to start with . A experienced quality/process engineer can use a hard typewriter eraser and get a good opinion just by making a few strikes (not recommended for everyone to do!). Furthermore, you can use IPC-4552, which involves tape testing. Again, I don't say Fisherscope is improper, but it is not a fair judge. Myself, I gave our istrument to people who plated car details, motorway stel barriers and such things. THERE, it's very worthful. Please, don't throw bottles on me. At least not if they are empty. Inge PS. If you are lucky to have a very good SEM driver, he/she can estimate the flash gold by doing a programmed stepwise scan with Backscatter detector (the acc voltage is important). Calibrate the grayscale level by means of sputtered gold on a nickel plate. ----- Original Message ----- From: "IMI TAN, Ann Jovelyn B." <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 1:00 PM Subject: [TN] FW: Inquiry on ENIG thickness Measurements Hi Technet Members, We have been encountering several miscorrelation callouts with our suppliers with regards to the measurement of the ENIG coating of the PCBs we order from them. This is considering different equipment sets used (suppliers normally use the Oxford CMI 900 while we use the Fischerscope XDAL), and collimator sizes. All other settings are taken from IPC 4552. I would like to clarify a few points: 1. When taking the actual thickness to be reported, should we take readings from multiple pads and take the average? Should the average be the reported value? In case one pad fails but the average passes, should the board be judged as acceptable? 2. Does the IPC 6012 rev C supersede even the Amendment in IPC 6012 B which states that the requirement for gold thickness only applies to non-solderable surfaces? Does this mean that the 0.05um minimum thickness specified in the IPC 6012 C would apply to all pads? Thank you, Ann Jovelyn B. Tan Supplier Quality Engineer Corporate Quality and Reliability Integrated Microelectronics, Incorporated #103 Trade Avenue cor Technology Avenue Special Export Processing Zone Laguna Technopark, Phase 4 Binan, Laguna 4024 Philippines Tel: +63 49 541 2440 to 55 local 3569/3550 Mobile: +63 923 288 1127 Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> http://www.global-imi.com <http://www.global-imi.com/> A member of the IMI group of companies IMI is a global vertically-integrated electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider well-known for its flexible expertise. 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