My general advice to people about silkscreens is "Don't use them!" They will cost you an average of 0.50 per side, and now with surface mount, people are putting them on two sides of the board. Gone are the days when a field service man goes to a field site with a flashlight looking for C25. Most people use field replacement units, and bring the faulty unit back to the shop to fix it. With everyone looking to shave pennies of the cost of a board, what a terrific cost savings! Because of the screen tolerance involved, most board shops will "clip" (remove) any alpha-numerics coming within .008" of a solderable feature. "R"s start looking like "P"s, etc. With today's tightly designed boards, there is really no room for legends. If you cannot create the culture change required at your company to eliminate silkscreens, then here are some thoughts for you: * Soldermask is not required for silkscreens, but you should be building your boards as SMOBC (soldermask over bare copper), which will of course necessitate soldermask. If you have parts without soldermask, I would suggest that you use a black legend ink for contrast. * Use an .008" draw to create your alpha-numerics. * Use a .050" minimum character height; otherwise, zero's and "O"s start to fill in. Good luck! Tom Coyle Field Services Engineer HADCO Corporation [log in to unmask]