Steve: Excellent question, and the timing is perfect. 1. What is the finest pitch that can be used with the HASL process????? 2. Does the HASL process still produce the doming affect on traces and pads??? Question: If the HASL process, now days, can produce a relatively flat surface, then, with solder paste screened onto the CCA the parts should stay in place. "In place", meaning not skewing from one direction or the other. 3. If fiducials are a problem for vision equipment, the what steps can be taken to keep fiducials level for the vision equipment????? 4. Next question is concerning mounting holes and ground planes. Will HASL leveling give as good a ground plane as Ni/Au?????? 5. What about BGA technology???? Does this question roll up into question number one???? The reason for my questions is because of the Ni/Au contamination issues. I thought that the problem was more prevalent with boards associated with only wavesoldering, however, I have learned today that SMT is not immuned. I have had many of one type of board that has been assembled through our process without incident. Then, all of a sudden, we have the contamination issue. When checking our process, we see no process change. It comes, it goes, and in the mean time it is very expensive when circuit card assemblies, not bare boards, have to be scrapped. Ron Hollandsworth ############################################################## 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 ##############################################################