Jerry, >From my experience most pcb manufactures are placing 100 micro inches of nickel with 30 micro inches of gold unless specified otherwise. The thin coating of gold, in the range of 2 - 10 micro inches, is coming from two sources. The main source of the thin gold is not the pcb manufacturer but the customer. Companies are going to the thinner gold to cut cost and this is seen alot on boards for pc computers. The second source is the pcb manufacturer, usually those with electrolys nickel / gold immersion process. This process used as the alternative to hasl for flat pads etc.... is a 3 to 8 micro inch gold process. A companies with this process saves alot of time and money if they can use it for the gold fingers. John Haman Jr Process/Product Eng. American Board Companies, 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 ################################################################