Hello netters We are an independent test facility. Occasionally we are asked to verify hard gold as part of bare board qualifications. Our customers in these cases are usually the OEM supply chain QA. The buyer controls the source and Quality's only prayer is to run some first articles through a 3rd party. Our customer's chance of determining the hard gold formula used on his boards is slim to none. If it weren't for UL, they probably wouldn't even know who supposedly built them. Some time ago, we tried Nano-indentation and there is a related TechNet thread. It didn't work for us. I assumed wear studies might be cost prohibitive, so we went to looking for 0.2% cobalt by SEM-EDS. This has worked nicely, until today. Today we have 0.09% Co and 0.07% Ni. From what I read, 0.1 Co is easily explained by too rapid deposition, and hardness suffers greatly. The question is whether the Ni is supposed to be there as a hardener or not? If yes, then 0.16% total is probably in the ballpark. But what are the chances it just got dragged there? Does it matter? Thanks in advance Chris Chris Mahanna Robisan Laboratory Inc. ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 16.0 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 For additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------