IPC Day Netherlands: A Focus on U.S. and EU Aerospace Electronics

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

I was delighted to accept the invitation to attend the Oct. 4 IPC Day Netherlands: Aerospace Electronics, at ESTEC, the technical and scientific heart of the European Space Centre in Noordwijk.

It’s not the easiest place to get to from the UK, something I regretted. Because of Brexit, I am no longer an EU citizen and fully realized its implication when I saw the immigration tailback at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport: a dozen auto-passport machines stood vacant while we foreigners queued for half-an-hour as three weary border-control policemen went through the formalities of checking and stamping our documents.

But at ESTEC I was made very welcome and greatly enjoyed the opportunity to learn about IPC’s activities in Europe as well as ESA’s advanced PCB technology. I heard expert presentations on training and standards, together with a privileged insight into the work and philosophy of NASA.

A full house of electronics industry professionals, managers, and engineers made the most of the occasion, met with their peers, exchanged their experiences, enhanced their technical knowledge and learned about the latest in industry standards and training opportunities.

The gathering was greeted by ESA materials engineer Stan Heltzel, whose department had kindly hosted the event, and the programme was introduced by IPC Europe managing director Philippe Léonard.

Léonard described the structure of IPC’s European operation and its function as “standards developer, and knowledge and education provider,” with more than 500 member companies, more than 500 volunteers on committees, and more than 30,000 certifications in Europe. He emphasised the activities of IPC in Brussels, where it is representing the electronics manufacturing industry and ensuring that the whole electronics manufacturing ecosystem is recognised by the European Commission, whose focus in relation to the European Chips Act had initially been only on silicon.

Léonard’s colleague—electronics technology standards manager Francisco Fourcade—described IPC standards as a fundamental part of the design and manufacturing process, with more than 300 in the library that are used worldwide for designing and manufacturing electrical and electronic products as well as for training, certification, and validation audit programmes. He stated clearly that the standards are industry-consensus documents, developed and maintained “by industry, for industry” by volunteers globally, using ANSI-accredited procedures. Any industry person can join a committee and participate at no cost. 

Fourcade described the standards-development process, from initial working draft to final publication. He showed a simplified version of the IPC Standards Tree and explained how it provides guidelines for the production and assembly requirements of electronics manufacturing companies, with each code on the tree identifying a standard or document outlining the guidelines or requirements for building an assembly, from data transfer at the bottom of the tree to end-product at the top. 

Training was the next topic for discussion. Master IPC Trainer Ramon Essers, CEO of ETECH Training, the leading IPC training centre for the electronics industry in Europe and authorised and licensed as an IPC Training Certification Centre, took to the floor, literally. He left behind the rostrum and the microphone and gave an animated interactive presentation while walking about. “Building better electronics starts with better training” was his maxim. 

He quizzed the audience and asked them to rate each question on a scale of one to 10: “How good is your knowledge of the design of a PCB? What do you know about CIT? What do you know about PCB production? Do you know anything about it or is it brand-new for you? Do you know the difference between PCB and PCBA? He concluded his questions with, “What do you know about cleaning and conformal coating?” After we added up our scores, he determined that many of us had scores between 20 and 30 but few knew it all, and the one standard familiar to most was IPC-A-610, Acceptability of Electronic Assemblies. “Would this document solve all the problems?” he asked, then answered, “No!” 

Essers also referred to the IPC Standards Tree and remarked that there are over 300 IPC standards, which would give a total of 4.2 times ten to exponential 19 of possible combinations of parameters. “How many bad solder joints are produced every year? Too many.” He enquired about what a perfect solder joint should look like, whether anyone has ever seen one, and listed a large selection of typical problems. The IPC-A-610 standard doesn’t tell the full story and it is necessary to start at the design and proceed through the Standards Tree from the bottom up, to figure out where to begin. 

With some humorous examples of the serious subject of electronics reliability under space-travel conditions, he again asked, “Does IPC-A-610 solve all the problems?” as a preface to explaining IPC’s justification for offering training and certification through the whole chain, and describing how his organisation teaches how to design for manufacturing, visually inspect bare boards, do microsections, and visually inspect assemblies, and the significance of J-Standards for explaining which material, processes, and equipment to use to build reliable boards. 

He explained the value of IPC certification to endorse the skills of individuals, and how IPC’s validation services provide qualified manufacturers lists (QMLs) and qualified products lists (QPLs). He remarked on the lack of validated companies in the Netherlands.

The highlight of the morning was the keynote presentation from Dr. Bhanu Sood, deputy chief technologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, entitled “The Role of Standards in Shaping the Future of Aerospace Technology.”

Founded in 1959 as NASA's first space flight centre and currently one of nine NASA establishments, Goddard Space Flight Centre is home to the U.S.’s largest organisation of scientists, engineers, and technologists who build spacecraft, instruments, and new technology to study Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe. 

Sood explained the structure of the Goddard establishment and its diverse mission portfolio, and listed the notable projects timetabled for the next five years. His responsibility at Goddard is the management of the technology development programme, identifying and evaluating new ideas and concepts for detectors and instruments for studying phenomena on earth and in space, aligned with NASA’s future direction.

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