Charles - Suggest you make a quick call to the connector supplier and ask them to confirm their plating. I have found many connector houses advertise "tin plated", but actually use a plating bath that deposits about 2% of another metal, often Bi. If so, this solves your concern over whiskering. A brief SEM run would also answer this question. Retinning in your own tinning process is possible, but it it's a cost and time adder. If you're dealing with a fine pitch (.025" or smaller) connector, you will probably need to use a flowing pot with N2 inerting to help control bridging. (By the way, the 500C in your note is a tad on the warm side, how's about 500F?) You may want to consider some of the contract tinning services who can set up to mechanically control this operation. Soldering with Sn63 or similar will solve the problem in the termination area. I have not personally experienced any cases where tin whiskers have formed between leads which were above the board surface. Anyone else have any experience in this area? Regards - Kelly ############################################################## TechNet Mail List 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://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Gayatri Sardeshpande at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5365 ##############################################################