Question???? To add to the mix, Nickel-Gold provides excellent coplanarity for surface mount over HASL, however, what about solid solder deposition technology. I understand you can still have the tin lead finish and the sluggishness hurdle, how I feel on Mondays, of the gold can be overcome plus any wetting problems. If in your total flow you have regressive flow costs utilizing HASL or nickel-gold, would the cost of a Sipad, Cipad, PPT, or imprint style solid solder deposit still be worth the change. It would seem implementation of SSD would also set a manufacturing process up for future finer pitch for smaller, lighter, cheaper, faster scenarios. Well, did I say enough right, wrong, and middle of the road to stir up everyones thoughts and opinions. If so, great, teach me. I not to old to learn. I am at the start of looking into comparisons of nickel-gold vs HASL vs SSD technology. All things considered, what's the best for fine pitch? Mixed technology? . . . Ron Hollandsworth ITT A/CD [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 technical support contact Hugo Scaramuzza at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.312 ################################################################