To All

For those who have not yet been involved in litigation when A-600 was used as
a procuremnt document.  You will come out second best because as A-600E states
in paragraph 1.2 "This document is standard for minimum acceptability
requirements and is not intended to be used for use performance
specification".  You should also note that inthe first paragraph, 2nd sentence
of
A-600E it states:  " It has been assembled to standarize the interpretation of
requirements contained in various specifications used in the printed board
industry, i.e.: IPC-RB-276, IPC-FC-250, MIL-P-55110........."

IPC-A-600 is a very good visual criteria for evaluation of product and as a
valuable aid for inspectors and others in understanding the verbage in the
performance spcifications, but since it is not a performance document and does
not set up performance requirements, sampling plans, procedures, frequency
etc, it should not be used the performance document, as the document states.

I have found it very acceptable to specify on the drawing or procurement
documentation as follows: "Fabricate to conform to IPC-6012 Class ( ) using
IPC-A-600 for visual evaluations and interpretations".  Note: Fill in the
Class that you require.  The perfomance specification may not be IPC- 6012 but
could be IPC-6013 or MIL-PRF-55110 etc.  With the above, the suppliers legal
counsel cannot sneak around the wording in A-600 to come up with "It does not
apply since it was not agreed to in writing by the user and supplier."  In
Section 1.5, the last paragraph in the second column of page 2 allows the
supplier tor furnish any quality of product that comes off his line unless an
attribute is specifically specified by the user.  The pending revison of IPC-
A-600F is expected to remedy this wording.

For those procuring assemblies, I found the same applies to J-STD-001 and IPC-
A-610.  J-STD-001 specifies the requirements and IPC-A-610 is the visual
interpretation.

Phil Hinton

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