Some grades of organic coatings can only survive one IR reflow. This means that after the first heat excursion the protective coat is gone and copper oxidation begins. You need to use a grade that is designed to handle multiple heat excursions. The problem with your boards right now is that they are obviously now oxidized. The post SMT clean operation and any baking you did will have contributed to this. I'm not sure of any fluxes that could wet such an oxidized surface. I don't know if you will be able to use these boards, without damaging your SMT. Recoating the boards involves among other things a microetch to clean the oxidation off of the copper. If possible you might try to remove the SMT from the boards, recoat, then do SMT, then immediately to your manual soldering. Very risky though, multiple recoatings of OPCs can overetch your plated through holes or do some other bad stuff to the surface of the board. Talk to your bare board house that provided the boards. I hate to say it, you might be better off salvaging what SMT you can, get new boards (with either a better ODP, or HASL), and restuffing. [log in to unmask] ------------------------------------ We are having trouble soldering organic protective coated bare copper boards. The difficulty is occurring with manual iron soldering in the post wave/wash shop. The boards soldered fine in SMT, and then they were washed. They then sat several weeks awaiting finalization of engineering changes and receipt of the EC parts. Now we are having extreme difficulty getting the solder to wet to the copper in the postmount shop. Does anyone have suggestions to overcome this problem? Would it be feasible to recoat the bare copper when it's determined the boards cannot be completed immediately? Does anyone have a suggested time limit in which to complete soldering after the wash? Does anyone know of aggressive flux cored solder wire which can promote wetting and still meet Bellcore specifications? Any advice would be appreciated. Allen Ahlert [log in to unmask]