Quality standards are highly important when manufacturing electronic printed circuit boards. PCBs are often produced in bulk, so any kind of fault that would hamper the effective operation of one PCB could affect dozens or even hundreds of them. At the same time, when you make any kind of purchase, you expect a certain level of quality. What is the IPC? The organisation periodically releases acceptability standards in the form of qualification and performance specification standards for the design and manufacture of all major types of printed circuit boards, and other electronic components. The IPC is an "Association Connecting Electronics Industries" that collects data from member companies and volunteers, and uses that data to create standards, guidelines and requirements. The value of the IPC is that members can learn from the experiences of other companies, and avoid the cost of duplicating expensive research. It also creates a foundation for everyone to build upon. For example, if the IPC recommends that the plating thickness of hole walls should average .001 inch, all circuit board manufacturers should be able to meet that recommendation consistently, as a minimum. There are IPC documents available for every phase of electronic development including design, fabrication, assembly, test and documentation. Here are the publications that are directly related to this tutorial: IPC-1710 Printed Board Manufacturer's Qualification Profile In addition to these, there are many other IPC documents related to bare board manufacturing on subjects such as materials, drilling, silkscreens, soldermasks, and final finishes. These detailed specifications are crucial for a good design and manufacturing process, but are beyond the scope of this document. All of these documents are under revision control, but when the document number is used without a revision letter, it is intended to mean "as of the latest revision".
IPC is a global trade association for the electronics industry. The ‘Institute for Printed Circuits’ (IPC) is the association connecting electronics industries and was founded in 1957. The IPC represents electronics design, printed circuit board manufacturing and electronics assembly.
IPC-2221 Generic Standard on Printed Board Design
IPC-2222 Sectional Standard on Rigid Organic Printed Boards
IPC-6011 Generic Performance Specification for Printed Boards
IPC-6012 Qualification and Performance Specification for Rigid PCBs
IPC-A-600 Acceptability of Printed Boards
IPC-9151 Printed Board Process, Capability, Quality, and Relative Reliability Benchmark
