I've been following this oxide alternative thread with some interest, and can add the following comments. A number of our board suppliers have either implemented these alternatives, or are considering it & seek our approval. We can't accept the light color of the Durabond or other tin process for our applications, which effectively rules them out (for us anyway.) Another list subscriber mentioned dendritic growth, we didn't get that far but it could be a valid concern. As far as the peroxy-sulfuric type alternatives go there only seem to be 2 players right now, Alpha & MacDermid, with very similar looking products. Performance is similar, with the peel strength #'s being slightly higher on the Alpha Prep samples. As a general comment we find time to delamination is improved with these oxide alternatives. Alpha claims to have a greater installed base of customers, whch makes us as an end user feel slightly more comfortable when accepting product built with new technology. Dr. Thomas Peters ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ################################################################ 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's web site (http://www.ipc.org) "On-Line Services" section for additional information. For technical support contact Hugo Scaramuzza at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.312 ################################################################