How well does your incoming inspection team know the acceptability standards?

Does your PCB quality team inspect to pass or inspect to fail? Knowing the difference between what is rejectable in a printed circuit board and what is a nonissue is more important than ever.

Skyrocketing costs, shortages of copper and fiberglass materials, and longer delivery times mean remakes are not available as quickly as before. Rejecting PCBs for things that don’t affect the form, fit or function of the final project is simply bad business.

To be clear, I am not advocating acceptance of substandard product. IPC-A-600 standards are clear as to what is good and what is not. But thanks to lack of training or misinterpretation of industry specs, incoming PCB quality inspectors are turning away perfectly good commercial-grade boards that then must be remade.

The main culprit in this cycle of unnecessary PCB rejection and remake costs is management, which fails to provide adequate training to incoming inspectors and instills in them a fear of releasing bad product to the manufacturing floor.

To continue reading, please log in or register using the link in the upper right corner of the page.

• Prev
• Next