| Is their an IPC standard for the water that is being used in the water wash. I have been looking and at this time have not found any thing. Steve: A lot of the old command and control specification environment has changed with the "industrialization" and obsoletion of many military specifications. BACKGROUND: There used to be specs for virtually everything that went into the production process. There was specs that told you: Solder to purchase How to set-up your process What the output of the process should look like And on and on ... Now specifications are more aimed at process end measures. Essentially, "if you did a good job soldering this is the product you shopuls get" type thing. One itsy bisty twist in this: contract requirements that existed before this change are generally not changed. ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION: With all of the the alternate cleaning technologies in use today, the focus is on board cleanliness. Essentially, "listen buddy I don't care how you clean that thing, but let me tell you how I know it will be clean." ANSI/J-0001B, along with IPC-A-610 replaced the mother of all specs ... MIL-STD-2000. ANSI/J-001B (J1B) addresses cleanliness things like: Ionic cleaniness: less than 10.07 ugm/sq in of NaCl equivalent. The folks over on TECHNET wax profilic on this kind of stuff. Having said this, you may want to consider the total soldering/cleaning system environment that your customer requires and define your process performance measures to meet those requirements. An example: Some customers require that no-clean boards need to have a board cleanliness of 3 to 5 ugm/sq in NaCl equivalent. Dave F
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