At 08:59 PM 9/20/00 +0200, Peter L. Peres wrote:
>It all depends on the quality of the polymer and on whether the traces are
>gold plated or not. I have seen these rated for 100,000 clicks but 'cheap'
>ones are in the low 1000's and maybe less. If there is no noble metal
>coating the life will be determined by time alone. In our climate that is
>under 2 years, maybe months. Some people print the contact fingers using
>low ohms/sq resistive paste. These do not oxidize but you go back to the
>polymer quality problem. With good quality materials the conductive
>plastic wears out first and stops being conductive after some time (1-2
>years or more).

That's interesting.. I've not seen this failure mode in our pads, even
after 10+ years in LA (!)
Different chemistry I guess.
We do use gold on the keypads.

--
Where's dave? http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?kc6ete-9

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
(like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics