One of my pcb vendors (oversea) wants to fabricate boards using electrolytically deposited gold (1um of Au over 5um of Ni) over entire board surface. That includes hole walls, soldering pads, conductive traces and ground planes. SMOBC is out the window and silkscreen/LPISM are last steps in board fabration process. This is first time that I was informed that a board vendor fabricates boards by depositing gold/nickel over entire board surface. My questions are: What negative effects will it have for smt and th board assembly manufacturing? Are smt/th process parameters req to be readjusted such as reflow profile? Will it increase diffusion of gold in solderpot? Will it increase solder joint brittleness? Are there long-term reliability issues? Is there any other negative issue that need to be addressed? There's no qualm about price. It is better than SMOBC boards with electroless Au/Ni immersion on soldering pads. regards Matthew Park NII Norsat International Inc. ################################################################ 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 ################################################################