email from: Mike Joyner Hi Matt, your fabricators should be able to handle non-spoked connections to the ground plane. Only argument that holds is for rework or service on leaded or thru hole parts, smd parts are generally not a problem.. Spoked or thermally relieved pads eat up a great deal of the ground plane for single and 2 sided boards, although can be accommodated more readily with multi layer designs with internal power/ground planes. Photon Vision Systems P.O Box 509 Cortland, NY 13045. tel. 607.756.5200 fax 607.756.5319 www.photon-vision.com [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Sanders Sent: Friday, October 09, 1998 8:22 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] RF soldermask defined pads Hello, My design engineers currently use a large amount of soldermask defined pads in ground planes for RF boards. Based on discussions with my fabricator and our assembly manufacturing folks, we'd like to get rid of designs like this and use spoked thermal ties to ground instead. My RF engineers, however, have concerns about doing this and losing material in their connection. Does anyone have guidelines for boards like this? I guess I'd be interested in hearing both sides: from the fabricator or assembler, how much material would we need to remove from a connection to a pad to affect the manufacturability; from the designer, how much material are you willing to have removed without sacrificing any functionality. Thanks for the help, Matt Matthew Sanders PWB Procurement Engineer, Trimble Navigation Limited [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'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 ################################################################ ################################################################ 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 ################################################################