Mark Finstad

Senior Applications Engineer

Flexible Circuit Technologies

Mark Finstad has over 30 years in the flex circuit industry in both design and manufacturing. He is a regular speaker at IPC APEX (Professional development courses) and PCB West (flex circuit design courses). He is also vice chair of IPC-2223 and active member of IPC-6013. Finstad has extensive experience with both domestic and off-shore manufacturing.

Mark Finstad has submitted responses to the following questions.

Tough Hand Soldering Problem
Without knowing the exact type of soldering problems you are having, I can only hypothesize based on your description of ...

Exposed Copper Risk
I would not recommend leaving exposed copper in ANY environment. There are a couple of ways to deal with this ...

What is Causing Solder Joint Cracking?
That solder joint appears to have been defective from the get-go. You probably had just a small whisker of solder ...

Pre-bake in a Vacuum
Using a vacuum oven to prebake bare flex and rigid flex circuits prior to soldering operations can be beneficial due ...

Removal of Non-functional Pads from Inner Layers
Eliminating non-functional pads is a great way to gain some real estate on all types of PCB's, but this practice ...

Class 2 vs. Class 3
The IPC standards that most clearly define the differences between classes would be IPC-2222/IPC-6012 Design/Performance for rigid PCB)and IPC-2223/IPC6013 (Design/Performance ...

Delamination Causing Scrap
The easiest way to determine if moisture is the problem is to bake your bare PCBs immediately prior to assembly ...

Cleaning with Sodium Bicarbonate
A lot depends upon what will be done to the silver after it is scrubbed. If the silver plated pads ...