Shaun Well your first message went through but since I have no hard facts I thought it might be better to let others answer (I think I already mentioned that I am quite lazy) but now that nobody cared for you let me try to "suck something out of my fingers" as we say in German. What do you mean by grainy? If you refer to the lead phases occurring in the solder, keep in mind that these are not an indicator on the grain size of the tin phase. It is for me not very surprising, that an alloy of Tin and Lead where additional elements such as Palladium are added will show more dark areas in a microsection than a pure Tin/Lead alloy since Lead as well as Palladium are visible as dark areas. The size of the phases depends on the cooling conditions. For Tin/Lead I am familiar with the effects of cooling rate and phase size. For Tin/Lead/Palladium I couldn't say much. Best regards Guenter ################################################################ 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 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 ################################################################