<< 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 *************************************************************************** * TechNet mail list is provided as a service by IPC using SmartList v3.05 * *************************************************************************** * To unsubscribe from this list at any time, send a message to: * * [log in to unmask] with <subject: unsubscribe> and no text. * ***************************************************************************