OK, now I've established, in some degree, the point of over-specification-itis, plese allow me to go one stage farther. The cause is mainly ignorance, often of people who think they know it all and feel clever at having rooted out a spec that is probably irrelevant to their situation. These are maybe the people whose further education is reading a freebie "technical" magazine. (OK, I know I'm caricaturing them). They don't attend IPC meetings, possibly because the bossman thinks they are too low in the pecking order to justify the expense. But the basic sin is that there is no polyvalent courses of physics, chemistry, alectronics, mechanics etc. in their tech education. They know too much of one speciality and nothing of the others. They are therefore incapable of making a reasoned decision. I'm lucky. I studied electronics in the 1940s, but the University I attended in Scotland, at that time, also forced us to learn about chemistry, physics etc. and there was even a one year course (one hour a week) on manufacturing techniques, which included the metallurgy and chemistry of soldering. Furthermore, we had to do our practical projects ourselves, by hand. This meant that I knew which end of a soldering iron I had to hold in my hand when I obtained my degree (and operate machine tools, such as milling machines, lathes etc.). In other words, we were all-round engineers, fit to face the practical world. I also took post-grad courses in chemistry, physics, heat, toxicology etc. I believe this may be different to today's engineer and thus causal to replacing commonsense and reasoning by specs and standards. I agree they may offer a guideline, but must be applied with knowledge. Brian --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 -----------------------------------------------------