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16 The PCB Design Magazine • June 2015 IPC-A-610: What's New with Rev F? by Leo Lambert EPTAC CoRP. IPC generates many specifications related to printed circuit board fabrication, as- sembly processes and inspection criteria. The intent of the following article is to describe how the documents come about and how they are generated by providing an overview of the latest changes in IPC- A-610, Acceptability of Electronic Assem- blies, hereafter identified as 610. Addition- ally, there are online courses available that will go through each one of these changes in details. Background Why are new revisions created? Can't IPC just issue updates to the existing revi- sion? Who defines what the changes are go- ing to be and who approves of those changes? Why can't they make changes for all the new technologies available? And the best question of all: Why does my product have some condi- tions that are not covered in the documents and specifications? Taking just one document, 610, and trying to answer those questions will hopefully pro- vide a window for customers, users, and man- ufacturers to see where these documents come from and how they are put together to upgrade the products being made, and hopefully im- prove the quality of those products. Every five years, a new revision is created for all the specifications from IPC. This was mandat- ed for all ANSI approved documents. Since many IPC documents were ANSI-approved, they had to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis, in our case five years. There are multitudes of implications with the release of new revisions. They include, but are not limited to: contract negotiations, purchas- ing of new specifications, and development of new certification training programs to cover the require- ments of those documents for the trainers and the specialist. This is all accomplished by attending the semiannual meetings of IPC and participating in the task group meetings, where all the new information is presented, all the comments are reviewed to correct feature