<< I am interested in doing some testing of water soluble fluxes in
accordance 
 with J-Std-001A, Appendix D. I know of a couple of sources for the IPC-B-36 
 circuit boards. Appendix D also gives you the latitude to use a circuit 
 board which is equivalent. What I would like to know is if someone knows of 
 an alternate source for an IPC-B-36 board which would be an acceptable 
 equivalent.

 Bill Kasprzak


Mr. Kasprzak,
I think that you will find that the B-36 board is the best way to go, all
things considered.  I have always considered that phrase "B-36 board or
equivalent" to be a quaint statement.  I think a better phrase would have
been "B-36 board or traverse the untamed wilderness alone".  To my knowledge,
there is no direct equivalent to the B-36 board.  The use of the "or
equivalent" term was included to give some form of flexibility for an
assembler to use a test board that was more representative of actual product.
 Many major firms (e.g Delco, Honeywell, Lucent, etc.) have their own test
boards that do closely approximate product.  Appendix D wording allows the
use of such vehicles for qualification.

So what's the problem?  All of the pass-fail criteria listed are for the
patterns of the B-36.  No guidence is given on what the pass-fail criteria
should be for these alternative vehicles.  Since SIR levels are tied to the
geometry of the test pattern, it is not a direct relation to an alternative
SIR pattern.  The question arises on how to evaluate the data.  I have done a
number of such evaluations, but generally considered all the data (ROSE, IC,
SIR) for pass-fail, rather than SIR alone.  As part of a recent effort, I
wrote a white paper for the IPC titled "A Comparison of Two SIR Test
Vehicles".  I do not know if that paper has been assigned a TR number yet.
 You might ask Bergman or Buetow at IPC.

If you go the route of an alternative test vehicle, which you can do, I think
you will find yourself rowing upstream.  In many cases, customers are
ignorant of the subtleties of Appendix D qualification and have no idea
whether to accept or reject the data when it falls outside the printed
pass-fail criteria for the B-36 board.  You might have an SIR professional,
such as myself, Susan Mansilla, Bob Neves, etc., give their technical
opinions, but they remain opinions.

I might ask why you seek an alternative vehicle.  If you are having problems
processing the B-36 board (as some do), you might find some of the tips that
I included in my Schmucks Guide (retitled the Laymans Guide) helpful.  Its
not a hard test to pass if you know what you are doing.  If you would like to
discuss it at greater length, give me a call.

Douglas Pauls
Contamination Studies Laboratories
[log in to unmask]
(317) 457-8095

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