-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBox Build
One trend is to add box build and final assembly to your product offering. In this issue, we explore the opportunities and risks of adding system assembly to your service portfolio.
IPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
The A-Line: A Standard Day
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
The IPC Midwest A-Line live production line will feature a jet printer, a pick-and-place machine, and a reflow oven. For what might seem like a simple assembly, a multitude of standards apply.
Dave Torp, IPC
Watching a product take form and realizing the technology and brain power that enabled it can be mind-boggling. What can be even more mind-boggling is what it takes to develop the standards relied upon for the design, fabrication, assembly, and test processes required to produce every electronic product. These standards are a compendium of best practices that many of today’s foremost industry experts have developed.
IPC standards cover almost every aspect of electronic assembly including terms and definitions and a design track. Since the A-Line manufacturing process starts with a PCB, let’s start with a standard for PCB design. IPC-2221A is the foundation design standard for all documents in the IPC-2220 PCB design series. It establishes the generic requirements for the design of printed boards and other forms of component mounting or interconnecting structures. Among the updates to Revision A are new criteria for surface plating, internal and external foil thicknesses, component placement, and hole tolerances. Coverage is expanded for material properties, dimensioning, and tolerancing rules, and via structures as well as updated coupon designs for quality assurance.
A PCB is populated with components through an assembly process. IPC-CM-770E provides effective guidelines in the preparation and attachment of components for PCB assembly and reviews pertinent design criteria, impacts, and issues. It contains techniques for assembly and consideration of subsequent soldering, cleaning, and coating processes.
Many standards cover the fluids dispensed, solderability, and the dispensing process. With the passage of the EU RoHS directive, many IPC standards were developed and revised to address compliance issues and the resultant changes in materials and manufacturing processes. J-STD-005 lists requirements for qualification and characterization of solder paste. Test methods and criteria for metal content, viscosity, slump, solder ball, tack, and wetting of solder pastes are included.
J-STD-001D is the industry-consensus standard covering soldering materials and processes. The D revision includes support for lead-free manufacturing, and easier-to-understand criteria for materials, methods, and verification for producing quality soldered interconnections and assemblies. The standard is ANSI approved and U.S. DoD adopted. It can be obtained in Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, Spanish, and Swedish.
For reflow, IPC-7530, “Guidelines for Temperature Profiling for Mass Soldering (Reflow & Wave) Processes” applies. During mass soldering, all joints must reach the minimum soldering temperature to assure metallurgical bonding of solder alloy and base metals. This standard provides guidelines for the construction of appropriate profiling test vehicles and various techniques and methodologies for temperature profiling.
To get a product on the market, an OEM has to decide who should assemble the product. That’s where OEM Standard for Printed Board Manufacturer’s Qualification Profile (MQP) IPC-1710A comes into play. Developed by the OEM council of the IPC, the MQP sets the standard for assessing printed board manufacturer capabilities and allows these companies to more easily satisfy customer requirements. This document eases auditing processes. Revision A enables users to electronically consolidate and organize data, improving information updates and transfers between manufacturers and customers.
With all the time, money, and efforts that go into the creation of an electronic product, it is essential that the product live up to these standards. That’s where IPC-A-610 comes in. Its topics are diverse: lead-free to marking and coating. IPC-A-610 is invaluable for inspectors, operators, and trainers. A must for all quality assurance and assembly departments, Revision D illustrates industry-accepted workmanship criteria for electronics assemblies through full-color photographs and illustrations. The revision has more than 730 new and updated illustrations of acceptability criteria. The document synchronizes to the requirements expressed in other industry-consensus documents and is used with the material and process standard IPC J-STD-001. It also boasts ANSI approval and DoD acceptance.
When you’re attending IPC Midwest, September 24?25, be sure to stop by the A-Line. And, if you want to explore all the standards used, you can find descriptions and acquire copies at the IPC Online Store (www.ipc.org/onlinestore).
Dave Torp, VP standards & technology, IPC — Association Connecting Electronics Industries, may be contacted at DaveTorp@ipc.org.