A recent thread of messages on TechNet discussed concerns about referencing and
obtaining superseded documents and documents with changes in their reference numbers.
The governing members of your IPC have tasked the IPC staff to provide the support
with obtaining IPC publications that the electronics industry needs. To accomplish
this end, Customer Support (under the team leadership of Jean Jones) will make every
effort to provide any current or previously published IPC document that is requested.
The first effort of Customer Service will be to advise requesters when a revision or
change has occurred which now makes the document different than what was originally
requested. If the requester is certain that they need/want an older version,
Customer Service will coordinate with the appropriate IPC department to provide a
copy of the requested document. Note that it MAY only be possible to provide black
and white copies of some older color documents.
The following information will provide a basic understanding of the numbering
changes. For several years your IPC has been involved with IEC, an international
(primarily European) standards development association. Once again, based on
direction from governing members of IPC, a decision was made to shift FROM IPC UNIQUE
document numbering and formatting schemes TO an internationally accepted schemes.
This is being phased in based on MAJOR document revisions.
As anyone involved with development of standards and specifications is aware, the
process is never easy and the bigger the scope, the harder it is to get industry
consensus on the whole document. For this reason, when complex documents enter the
revision process, they are reviewed to see if they can be broken down into sections
to facilitate development and approval.
The IPC numbering scheme was merely sequential and the actual numbers usually had no
obvious meaning. The international scheme provides four-number blocks in which the
first two numbers point to a GENERAL purpose/function. 22nn numbers refer to PWB
design. 60nn numbers refer to PWB performance. The last two digits of the block are
unique to a "family" of documents with a SPECIFIC purpose/function.
The first document in the family will always end in "0". This document will
typically be only a few pages and serves the purpose to establish and define that
specific family of documents. (This document has no value to the end user, typically
will not be published, but can be made available on request.)
The primary document in the family will end in "1" and will establish the "generic"
requirements that will apply to ALL THE OTHER DOCUMENTS IN THE FAMILY. Examples are
IPC-2221 for design requirements for all PWBs, and 6011 for performance requirements
for all PWBs. These documents will NOT CONTAIN ANYTHING UNIQUE TO ONLY ONE KIND of
PWB. None of this information will be repeated in the other documents so when it is
updated, it won't automatically require that other documents be updated also.
Other documents in the family will be unique to, in the example above, specific PWBs.
IPC-2222 is the design document for Rigid PWBs WHEN USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH
IPC-2221. IPC-6011 and IPC-6012 together provide the performance requirements for
rigid PWBs. I'm shooting from the hip now because I'm on the road and don't have the
documents handy to reference, but I think I remember that IPC-6011 and 6013 are all
that a user needs to identify the performance requirements for flex print boards.
Other family documents are in development, but the whole effort wasn't held up for
the few parts.
There is some arbitration on the part of the governing members and Dave Bergman, VP
of Technical Programs prior to the decision to renumber documents. For example,
IPC-A-600 and IPC-A-610 are in revision and will not be renumbered during this
effort; they will only increment one revision letter. The component mounting document
IPC-A-770 is becoming IPC-7070 through 7078 (7075 for BGAs, 7078 for Flip-Chip
components.) IPC-R-700C became 7711 for Rework of Electronic Assemblies (remove and
replace components) and 7721 for Repair and Modification of Printed Boards (laminate,
conductors, pads and plated through hole repair/mod.)
This got longer that I had hoped. If you have any specific questions, please reply
to me OFFNET ONLY.
Jack Crawford
Project Manager, Assembly
[log in to unmask]
(847) 509-9700 ext. 393
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