Dear "straight and narrow path', Sorry, but I have to come down on the side of your friend. The pad sizes for chip components are derived primarily from wave soldering needs where pad areas need to be large enough to be touched by the wave. If you do reflow, that is totally unnecessary. In fact, studies in Germany have shown reliability improvements with both narrower pads as well as placements that are off-center. Both of these conditions result in smaller solder fillets. It is large solder fillets that frequently cause the cracking of capacitior chips, particularly in cold temperature operation or testing. Narrower pads also reduce the likelihood of dombstoning—again smaller fillets=lower surface tensions. In fact, for these components there is not technically justifiable need for fillets. For larger chip components on FR-4, you would get more solder joint reliability by producing solder joints with larger solder joint heights between PCB and component (remember solder columns for CBGAs). Werner Engelmaier Engelmaier Associates, L.C. Electronic Packaging, Interconnection and Reliability Consulting 7 Jasmine Run Ormond Beach, FL 32174 USA Phone: 904-437-8747, Fax: 904-437-8737 E-mail: [log in to unmask] ################################################################ 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 ################################################################