George,

    You're sure not gonna' get flamed by me...I share your opinion as well and 
have a few of my own thoughts on this too...for what they're worth.

    The way I've always viewed the IPC standards is as a guideline...a good 
guideline mind you, but just a guideline. I'll even go so far as to say the 
criteria that's spelled out is the "Ideal" specifications that you try to 
achieve. If something like say a solder joint doesn't match the picture exactly,
or isn't precisely what is spelled out, in my view it doesn't mean that the 
solder joint is bad. You got to look at everything from a broader perspective 
than that in my opinion.

    I'm sure there are a lot of us that have got into "head-butting" contests 
with a source inspector, or someone from a quality organization that is being 
real insistent that something should be reworked because it doesn't exactly 
match the pictures in the -610, or you have to spend a bunch of time tweeking a 
process to satisfy a cosmetic issue that they've interpretted as being a threat 
to the product reliability. We all would like to say that whatever it is we're 
responsible for building is going to last forever, but that's not realistic, is 
it? Furthermore, how much time and money do all of us have to spend "tweeking" 
things to meet more or less a cosmetic requirement on a product that's going to 
be obsolete and replaced in a year or two? Probably thousands and thousands of 
dollars, maybe even millions...

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify shoddy workmanship or say that
following IPC standards is overkill, but there should be more of a reason to 
reject or rework something than; "It doesn't look like the picture in the -610!"

    I got some Bar-B-Q sauce too George (some Justin Wilson's sauce, I 
"gair-ron-tee") and I'm right beside ya' at the grill...  


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