I have had some discussion with this a year ago or so, and I have come to the conclusion that we should leave the pads IN. >From the explanation I got from a very good source whom I trust, the reason to leave them in has to do with the movement of the fiberglass during heating/pressing. If you remove the lands on inner layers, you have a more likely chance that the fiberglass will shift more - there is less copper to keep the "strength of the fibers" from moving too far. I know there will be more knowledgeable answers coming on this - people in the bareboard business - but that was the gist of it. I think of the inner lands as little "anchors" which keep the movement of the material stable. I would suppose that if there is an ample amount of copper evenly distributed on the layer then the inner pads are less important for this reason. I also think of this as being analogous to the outer layers "plating equalization" issue. If there is sparse routing on large outer surfaces you get copper build up on those traces because there is nothing to steal away (thieves) the plating. Tom Kavendek Lucent Technologies Murray Hill, N.J. *************************************************************************** * TechNet mail list is provided as a service by IPC using SmartList v3.05 * *************************************************************************** * To unsubscribe from this list at any time, send a message to: * * [log in to unmask] with <subject: unsubscribe> and no text. * ***************************************************************************