Hello, Although IPC-6012 specifies a minimum thickness of 0.8 micrometers (30 micro inches) of gold for Class 1 and 2 edge-board connectors, it seems that more and more suppliers are suggesting thinner and thinner gold plating as a low cost alternative. Looking back into this forum's archives, I found the 1995 tread 'Where did 30m" for gold Tab plating come from?' with very good information but no definite answer. One poster performed an experiment about thickness and connection cycles (see attached message fragment), and found out that a 20m" finger gave up at about 10 cycles. If these results are still valid (I don't see why not), how come PCB vendors are even suggesting flash gold (2 to 7 micro inches) as an acceptable option? I also posed this question (via E-mail) to two connector manufacturers, AMP and Burndy. AMP answered immediately but did not provide a definite thickness (I got their connector's specs and insertion rates thought). I have not received a reply from Burndy yet. Do anyone has more information or pointers about this issue? Has technology advanced so much that thin flash gold is acceptable for edge-board connectors in a Class 1 product? Thanks, Carlos R. Robert Hewlett-Packard Puerto Rico | _____________________________________________________ | | | Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 17:18:37 EDT | From: [log in to unmask] (MR NORMAN S EINARSON) | Subject: Re[2]: Where did 30m" for Tab plating co | | To all that have inquired about 30 m gold thickness: | | This question would be better answered with a required application. Let | me try to cover most of this subject and apply various applications. | | Many years ago (too many to mention), I performed an experiment to find | out how many insertions I could get from a gold plated board into a | connector. Carefully selecting the same thickness boards (. 062") I | found the approximate following results, always with 100 M base nickel. | 100m gold = 500 insertions; 50 m gold = 300 insertions; 30 m gold 50 to | 75 insertions; 20 m gold 10 insertions. As you can see, the insertion | count reduces rapidly as the gold thickness reduces. ################################################################ TechNet E-Mail Forum provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ################################################################ To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TechNet <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TechNet ################################################################ Please visit IPC web site (http://jefry.ipc.org/forum.htm) for additional information. For the technical support contact Dmitriy Sklyar at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.311 ################################################################