IPC Standards: Ticket to a Safe Passage

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

John Watson, CID, is a customer success manager with Altium who also teaches PCB design at Palomar College in Carlsbad, California. He’s noticed that most of his students are primarily new to the industry and not familiar with IPC standards. In his classes, he teaches how to use these standards while trying to help students access the documents more easily.

When we met with John, we asked him to discuss the importance of understanding IPC standards, the price you’ll pay if you decide not to follow them, and his plans for getting new designers on board with standards as early as possible in their careers.

Andy Shaughnessy: John, many of your students have never had an introduction to IPC standards and don’t know why they could help them with their designs. Where is the disconnect?

John Watson: True, but there’s an underlying issue. There’s another group of designers who don't follow any standards. When I ask them what standard they’re following, they respond that they don’t follow standards. But that’s like building a house with no measuring tape. I look at PCB design and manufacturing as an all-in-one package, where it’s combined with a fabrication drawing and an assembly drawing; it’s a contract and bill for services.

IPC standards are the drivers of the fabrication process. They guide designers and explain what they should be doing. When I ask these designers why they don’t use them, often they’ll say, “I want to reinvent the wheel.” I’ll tell them, “Do you know how difficult that is? You have an entire system and structure here of standards that have been developed through experts in the industry, and you want to ignore them?”

Barry Matties: At the very least, that unnecessarily elevates risk.

Watson: That's right. You're asking a fab house to build a board not based on any guidelines. If you don't aim for anything, you're bound to hit it. That’s what can happen if you don't have a guideline to direct you when you're designing the PCB. It’s a recipe for failure.

To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the October 2023 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.