What Are IPC Standards For PCB Assembly

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What are IPC standards for PCB Design, PCB
Assembly and PCB Fabrication?
PNC Inc
www.pnconline.com
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IPC standards for PCB Design
IPC standards are electronic design,
manufacturing and inspection standards published
by IPC, a global trade and standards setting
association focused on the electronics industry.
IPCs standards are used worldwide and have been
essential to the globalization of the electronics
industry. Anyone who designs or manufactures PCB
assemblies needs to be familiar with the
standards.
Most engineers and designers first encounter the
IPC standards in the fabrication notes on PCB
drawings or because they have been trained on
ubiquitous IPC-A-610 Acceptability of Electronic
Assemblies which illustrates quality standards
for PCB soldering and cleaning.
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The IPC publishes standards for every aspect of
PCB design, manufacturing, and inspection. The
major categories of the standards are
?General documents ?Design specifications ?Materia
l specifications ?Performance and inspection
standards ?Flex assembly and materials standards
The General Documents cover terms and
definitions, PCB tolerances, PCB documentation,
and bare PCB testing standards.
Flex assembly and materials standards cover both
the materials and the assembly standards for
flexible printed circuits.
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The Design Specification Section focuses on
guidelines for the electrical engineer and PCB
layout designer. Perhaps the two best-known
design standards are IPC-2221 Generic Standard
on Printed Board Design and IPC-7351B Generic
Requirements for Surface Mount Design and Land
Pattern Standards. Fortunately for the PCB
designer, these generic standards are encoded in
the PC Board layout software's internal design
rules, so it is not necessary to have them
memorized when laying out a PCB.
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The Material Specifications define the
specifications for everything in the electronics
supply chain from the pre-preg to the silkscreen.
These specifications are often referenced in the
notes on a PCB drawing. One typical example is
IPC-4552Performance Specification for
Electroless Nickel/Immersion Gold (ENIG) Plating
for Printed Boards which sets requirements for
the gold plating of PCBs.
The Performance and Inspection Documents contains
one of the most important standards, IPC-6011
Generic Performance Specification for Printed
Boards. IPC 6011 establishes the requirements
for PCBs and defines the level of quality
ultimately reliability for PCBS the IPC-6011
standards cover the following topics
? PCB design ? PCB assembly ? PCB
testing ? PCB inspection ? PCB documentation
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