Tom makes an excellent reccomendation here - get rid of your silkscreens! I have struggled with this cultural change he describes while working within a major automotive company. The resistance to the change was based on two premises 1) manual insertion operators would increase the number of misinsertions and 2) troubleshoot/repair persons would have difficulty in locating features. I would argue that suppling the persons with "maps" of component locations is sufficient. Especially in the case of large volumes, after building 20,000 units - the insertion people surely know where their five components go. Jamie McIntyre Field Application Engineer PCI -----Original Message----- From: mailnet Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 1997 11:28 PM To: Jamie W. McIntyre Subject: [log in to unmask]: RE: FAB: Silkscreen From: [log in to unmask] Tom: We work to a stated minimum character height of .040" and thickness of .008". We also perform an "autoclip" of the nomenclature, which obliterates any silkscreen characters that fall within .008" of a solderable feature, due to silkscreen tolerancing. Yes, "R"s sometimes end up looking like "P"s, and "B"s like "3"s. This is why I have been encouraging my customers for years to eliminate silkscreen if possible. An added benefit to eliminating legends is a cost savings of about $1/panel per side (divide by # up per panel for piece price savings). I realize that eliminating silkscreens requires a culture change, to say the least, but most designs of late do not afford the real estate necessary to screen these alpha-numerics onto circuit boards with any degree of legibility. Many folks are designing a different shaped pad for pin 1 (a square) in the etch pattern for component orientation. Tom Coyle Field Services Engineer HADCO Corporation *************************************************************************** * TechNet mail list is provided as a service by IPC using SmartList v3.05 * *************************************************************************** * To subscribe/unsubscribe send a message <to: [log in to unmask]> * * with <subject: subscribe/unsubscribe> and no text in the body. * *************************************************************************** * If you are having a problem with the IPC TechNet forum please contact * * Dmitriy Sklyar at 847-509-9700 ext. 311 or email at [log in to unmask] * **********************************