At 11:26 AM 11/12/01 -0700, Bob Fearon wrote: >Guts > Sorry to mislead, the additional cost came from routing the boards out of >the panels > and then plating.
Ah. *That's why it was so expensive.* A whole extra step to be performed on a bunch of small boards instead of on the panel. I'd really try to avoid doing it that way. It would not only be two additional plating steps but also the top and bottom surfaces would have to be masked. Instead, I'd determine a few places, if possible, where an opening in the edge plating would be tolerable and leave those as tabs. The internal routing would be done before electroless copper, so all the edges would be plated in the same step as the holes. > Mindful that edgr plating is not a "linear" or accurate as >standard > thru hole plating. That does not make sense to me. Plating of a copper-free board surface is done by first using electroless copper which chemically deposits a *very* thin film of copper on the surface, then it is electroplated up, typically to one ounce added copper in order to get about 1 mil of copper minimum in the holes. The rest of the board gets about 1.4 mils. The holes do not plate as easily or as reliably as the board surface, and this gets worse the smaller the holes. So edge plating should be pretty good, being more like board surface than like the interior of holes. But the accuracy of the plating would not be of much importance. Even small voids in the plating might be harmless. The largest difficulty in plating the edges would be the roughness of the edges, the smoother the edges before plating, the more uniform the plating. Still, I'd think that plating accuracy would be better than in the holes. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abdulrahman Lomax Easthampton, Massachusetts USA * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
