Paul, I would have loved to bond to bare aluminum if we didn't also have to mess with those pesky passive components that people always seem to want to put on the boards as well! I know that aluminum can be plated, but I don't know the specifics of if it would work in vias as well. Likely be easier with large vias rather than plugged vias though - will leave that to the platers, but would be good to check for yourself. This may be totally out in left field, but why not just use a normal copper process and ENIG plate? Good for Al wedge bonding and good for soldering... And the board construction process is generic. Steve Creswick Sr Associate - Balanced Enterprise Solutions http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevencreswick 616 834 1883 -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul Jackson Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 2:31 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Aluminum fine-line PCB Hi All, I'm new here to Technet so I'll ask you to be gentle, at least at first. We are manufacturing fine-line aluminum trace PCBs and our customers are mainly wirebonding chips directly on the aluminum and attaching components on selective copper pads. We are trying to find a more elegant way to achieve through-hole connectivity than our current method of filling vias with solder wick braid and aluminum solder paste. It works but it's "fugly". The aluminum is 30µm and the dielectric is typically 2.1mil. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Paul Jackson Omni Circuit Boards (855) 798 9717 *w*ww.omnicircuitboards.com ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. For more information please contact helpdesk at x2960 or [log in to unmask] ______________________________________________________________________