The majority of boards built today are coated with solder resist or solder mask as it is sometimes referred, but care should be taken to make sure that this process does not result in contamination. We will take a look at this concern along with issues you may want to consider if you want to take this a step further and apply conformal coatings to the final assembly.
Some questions we will be looking at are:
Is any type of contamination ok?
How clean does a board have to be prior to coating?
What is a salt spray test?
What do IPC specifications 830, 6012, and TM-650 have to say?