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May 2017 • The PCB Magazine 79 discussion at our committee chairman meeting, and I think at the technical activities executive committee (TAEC), about even doing away with paper copies of things in general and we really did see the dichotomy. There was the old guard, so to speak, who said "we have to have paper, it's never going away," but in the case of some of the professors—some of the committee lead- ership is also working with colleges—they say the generation coming up doesn't use paper at all. They haven't printed anything in the last two years, it's all digital, and so going through IPC EDGE is really an excellent way to gear to- ward the common learning. Presentation format aside, yes, I agree we're a little light on the circuit board fabrication side. In our defense, it has been our smallest program and not as much emphasis has been placed on the A-600 or the 6012 but it is starting to build. I'm hearing more from fabricators, especial- ly overseas—China and the UK—that they're starting to see an increase in demand for those, so that's a good thing. We're hoping to see more of those, but as Dave was saying we've got new programs coming out this year. The A-610 and the J-STD-001 revisions for the G Rev are com- ing up. We've got in-person possibilities. Now these are in investigation so far. We haven't put anything hard together, but the A-640, which is the brand new fiber optic acceptability doc, is coming out and that one seems to be generat- ing a whole lot of interest. We're talking about possibly partnering with a vendor that already has a program together and tweaking it or pur- chasing it, whatever we need to do to match the A-640. The other one is the A-630 Electrical En- closure (or box build), so the opposite end of where the circuit boards are. The A-630 is building up and we've had a lot of interest in a training program wrapped around that one. The documents in their A Revision now are aiming to be released by the end of the year and we're keeping an eye on the content there. We didn't do a training program around it ini- tially because it was a fairly thin document that would have been a small program, and we didn't want to put something out just to put something out; we wanted to have some content in it. But then going back to the EDGE program, specifically coming up is IPC-6012DA for auto- motive, which is a hot topic right now. I'm cur- rently working on the add-on certification that will be our first add-on certification delivered through the EDGE program. The concept is that someone would have gone through the face-to- face 6012 training, so we're not taking away the face-to-face certification; that's a cornerstone. Bergman: If I could chime in, Patty, that's an of- fering for your PCB interest. We haven't forgot- ten; 6012 is our printed circuit board standard and this is the 6012DA which addresses needs of the automotive industry. Roberson: The 6012 automotive just came up and I think it was one of our first that was real- ly pushed hard from the European community. We had a lot of European interest with the big guys over there. Goldman: That makes sense. Roberson: So this one's going to be going out. Somebody will have the 6012 base certification and then the intent is to allow them to go onto IPC EDGE and take this course, complete it, and then they would have the add-on certifica- tion for the 6012 automotive. Continuing again with the board specs, we've had a lot of interest in the 6013 and the 6018, and again these are the 6010 series, as we call them. As you know, the 6013 is for flex and the 6018 is also a circuit board standard. But with both of those, we're looking at the same type of concept where it's an add-on certification for the 6012. Somebody who has their 6012 already can go onto EDGE or could get the additional information. Basi- cally, I'm calling it a differences module where we say, "OK, 6012 says this, and here's where the changes are for 6013 and 6018." We've got a number of things that are com- ing along geared toward the upcoming indi- viduals and the learning styles that they have. For the design programs, we've talked with and held the CID program. We actually held a beta class to work with North Carolina State to get this information down into the college level. Gary Ferrari from EPTAC helped with that. INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE—PREPARING THE NEXT GENERATION