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SMT007-Jan2020

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56 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2020 to be cleaned, why would you use a cleaning technique, which is what the ROSE test does to establish whether or not? From an ionic con- tamination point of view, it's acceptable. What we found is that using insulation resis- tance techniques, we effectively have no inter- est in whether or not it's ionic or non-ionic; it simply measures changes to resistance. And that makes a huge amount of sense. You should only embrace techniques, such as ion chroma- tography and FTIR, when you find a problem. Some customers are even going to the range of spectroscopy, so this is a far bigger subject than people realize. The world of standards is broken down from the World Trade Organization (WTO) to two bodies, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) or the International Stan- dards Organization (ISO). Beneath those, there are a host of national standards bodies. In the U.K., we have the British Standards Insti- tute. Further, in France, there is the AFNOR; in Germany, there is DIN, there's the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in the U.S. Beneath ANSI—subcontracted, if you wish— IPC has taken up that role, and I've worked for more than 20 years in both groups. It has been my experience that the work done at IPC has some advantages to IEC because it embraces a huge number of professional people that attend the committee meetings; meanwhile, in IEC and ISO, it tends to be the selected leaders coming together. Every country has its own shadowing committee, so it's a cast of thousands, but most of them never get to meet one another. Having that exchange of ideas and concepts in prepar- ing IPC documents is a great benefit. Now, through this change to J-STD-001, users have to produce objective evidence and not rely on a simple cleanliness number, which is a grossly misleading term. It shouldn't be applicable to anybody because how do you define cleanliness? Twenty years ago, I would say, "How clean is clean?" when we were involved deeply in the subject of conformal coating. Trying to help people understand the extent of that question is a difficult problem, coupled with the fact that we have an increas- ingly transient workforce in the industry pretty much globally, certainly in Europe and Amer- ica. As a consequence, the need to reeducate people becomes of huge importance, and find- ing and keeping good people is hard to do. Historically, what I have seen—and I've been in business for 50 years—is that, generally speaking, companies no longer provide good career opportunities. Companies bring some- one in, have them do a job, and get rid of them because it's all about numbers, but people are not numbers. Having that depth of knowl- edge, experience, and expertise is diminishing because people of my generation, immediately behind me, are already retired. Many of my colleagues say I should, too, but why would I want to retire? I enjoy what I'm doing. It's very rewarding to help educate people going for- ward with a background of understanding that enables that to be communicated effectively. Barry [Matties] and I recently did an inter- view on "The Long Road to a New Standard," and that is so true. The industry leaders, for the benefit of their numbers, want to have standards up to date at the absolute maximum period of a couple of years. It is nearly impos- sible to do that because by the time you've written the document, drafted it, circulated it, received everybody's feedback, addressed var- ious comments, and discussed and debated whether or not it needs to be modified, you present it for a re-ballot and may be pleased What we found is that using insulation resistance techniques, we effectively have no interest in whether or not it's ionic or non-ionic; it simply measures changes to resistance. And that makes a huge amount of sense.

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