Yes, My experience with Lifted fiducial pads can be attributed to one of the following: 1. The angle at which the panel/board is fed through the HAL, especially prominent with depanelized boards versus paneled. 2. Since you are using a HAL, you are more than likely to be running panels at a 45 degree angle to obtain a coplanar surface. Doing so, will require the edges of the board to make contact with the tin rollers first, in turn applying localized preassure over the fiducials/corner versus equalizing the roller preassure over the span of the panel. 3. Item 2 worsens the issues further should you use copper foils of 1oz (seldom) and greater (2oz, very likely). The etch factor or undercut that is associate with thicker copper weakens the ficucial. SMT Lands don't experience this problem due to the copper to laminate interface being greater. 4. Adjust the tin roller spacing. I somethimes found operators running .093 or .125 thick boards through .062 set opening. The Rollers need to be adjusted for the amount of copper weight in addition to overall PCB thickness'. 5. More importantly is how many thermal excursions has this board gone through. The solder pot temperature is typically 500F+-10. If the first HASL is unsuccessful, allow the panel to cool before processing again. Running the panels multiple times to close to the Tg allows for material degradation, thus weakening the copper to laminate interface and possible removal of the laminate buttercoat. Hope this helps, John Gulley Inet 1255 W. 15th St. Plano, TX 75075 ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: [TECHNET] Lifted Fiducials Author: Ron Hayashi <[log in to unmask]> at Internet