With IPC, you’ll get high-quality and reliable electronics through the development of trusted standards which drive the success of our global electronic industry. Implemented all through the industry, these standards help in clarifying and communicating expectations for virtually everyone present in the industry. With IPC standards, you get better consistency, reliability, and quality in your electronics manufacturing.
Presently, IPC features more than 300 active industry standards that cover almost all stages of the development cycle of our electronics. Also, there are over 3,000 professionals in the electronic industry that participate in developing these standards.
Also, have you heard that almost all the steps in producing and assembling a PCB has an IPC standard linked and associated with them? From the designing and the purchasing and then to the assembly and its acceptance, IPC provides a reliable standard that ensures consistency, reliability, and quality, when handling the assembly of electronics which goes into a product.
What Does IPC Mean?
The establishment of IPC, which is linked to our Electronics Industry Association, provides support to different customers, manufacturers, and designers with the same efforts and goals. This trade association for our electronic interconnection industries helps in promoting the world’s electronics sector by setting different standards for authorizing electronic products of high-quality.
Our company provides advanced supply chain and support capabilities which allows companies to buy materials much faster. By 1957, IPC grew to become an association, which features 3,000 companies. The companies offer different services, which includes circuit board design, manufacturing, as well as PCB components to serve customers in all areas of life including medical, consumer electronics, automobiles, etc.
This IPC standard helps in standardizing the installation as well as manufacturing requirements of the electronic components and equipment. Because of these IPC standards, different PCB designers create high-quality IPC circuit board designs for ensuring the quality of a product as well as reducing the time a product gets to the market. Furthermore, IPC helps in collecting the most recent news occurring in the industry and then sets some standards to achieve the best practices possible.
What Does IPC 4101 Offer?
IPC 4101 is described as base materials’ specification, which is designed for rigid as well as multilayer PCBs. The release of this specification came in December 1997, serving as a replacement for MIL-S-13949 standard. However, it featured most of the wordings found in military standards.
In addition, this standard’s format appendix had to be maintained to standards specifying the resin and fiber systems of different PCB laminates, adding to the testing parameters and properties. Initially, there were 41 slash sheets. However, as this industry worked with lead-free and green processes, the slash sheets rose in number to become 66.
Having all slash sheets, as well as understanding exactly what they are, will provide great advantages to selecting the best properties of a specific laminate to help with the circuit board design.
What are the Laminate Specifications of the IPC 4101?
All the slash sheets usually begin with laminate specifications. This deals with the reinforcement type, resin system, flame retardant mechanism, fillers, and glass transition. This reinforcement type seems like woven E-glass or fiberglass.
Moreover, it might as well as be cellulose paper types and exotic fiberglass such as unidirectional and aramid fiber. It serves as the structural component of the laminate. In addition, resin systems can also combine different epoxies in order to meet the requirements of the type of laminate. At first, the listing of the primary epoxy would be done, and then the secondary comes in. After this, another secondary might even follow.
Using Epoxy Resins
There are different epoxy resin systems such as polyimide and polyphenyl. The resin systems help in binding the structure’s layers together. Usually, the flame retardant is bromine or RoHS compliant bromine, and it could be phosphorus as its other option. In addition, fillers may not be applicable or they may be inorganic with a few laminate types using the kaolin fillers. The fillers aid in lessening resin shrinkage. This helps in reducing crack formation in these filled areas.
Glass Transition Temperature (Tg)
The glass transition temperature helps in describing the temperature range whereby the molecules of the resin transits from the rigid and brittle state into a flexible and pliable state. This value was included in the specification area because some designers based their laminate choices for RoHS compliance on a Tg material.
What Does IPC 4103 Offer?
The IPC 4103 can be described as base material specification for high frequency and high speed applications. This covers requirements for unclad and clad plastic laminates as well as bonding of the layer materials to be utilized for fabricating the circuit boards for stripline, microstrip, as well as high speed electronic and electrical circuits.
With IPC 4103, you can use low dielectric constant (low permittivity) glass reinforcements for bonding and laminating materials. Therefore, this improves the loss tangent, as well as permittivity properties of materials that conform to this specification.
Qualified Products List (QPL) is useful for qualifying the products of the EMS suppliers (these include the PCBS), as well as the sites for manufacturing the products. Companies working with the IPC 413 standard on the Qualified Products List supplies products that are qualified to the IPC standards.
What’s the Difference: IPC 4101 vs IPC 4103?
When seeking slash sheets from a laminate manufacturer, there is a high chance that you see both IPC 4103 and IPC 4101 standards. The IPC 4101 standard works with standard laminates coupled with prepreg materials. This encompasses the epoxy resin materials with fiberglass.
Although the initial standard specified about 41 slash sheets in total, there has been an increase in the number to more than 60. RoHS regulations and focus on environmentally-friendly lead-free materials has made this possible. Furthermore, the IPC 4103 extends these slash sheets into a copper unclad and clad laminate materials coupled with bondply materials that are used in high speed and high frequency printed circuit boards.
What Can You Find In A Slash Sheet?
On a specific material system, you will find two data sets on slash sheets. These include material/primary structural properties, as well as some test results as it is determined under the testing standards of the IPC. Furthermore, all the slash sheets begin with structural and material specifications for a particular laminate.
Also, every manufacturer features personal material names utilized in communicating particular laminates to the customer as well as the public. However, these laminates have to be linked to that particular slash sheet that works within either the IPC 4103 or IPC 4101 standards. Below are some of the information you will find in the slash sheet
- Type of reinforcement (which is usually fiberglass)
- Resin material systems (usually epoxy mix)
- Diller materials as well as flame retardants found inside the laminate
- The temperature of glass transition
This is the main requirement list needed by PCB laminate materials to conform so as to work in line with the standards included in a slash sheet. Also, the remaining slash sheets would list some features that the laminate has to include, which is determined in line with the test methods of the IPC-TM-650. These include:
- Thermodynamic properties, which includes moisture uptake and thermal resistance rate
- Dielectric properties such as surface resistivity, breakdown strength of the field, and loss tangent
- Peel strength, or quantity of stress needed to separate the two layers once bonding is completed (this is either laminate-to-laminate or copper-to-laminate)
- Specifications for the base material and prepreg
Why IPC Standards Should be Used in Any Manufacturing Process
Helps you gain some control over the e3nd product’s reliability and quality
Reliability and quality can be described as the basis of the marketplace competition and important to the profitability and reputation of your company. When you implement the IPC standards all through the process of manufacturing, this ensures longer life, better performance, as well as compliance with the lead-free regulations.
Helps to improve communication with employees and suppliers
The IPC standards can be described as standards, which your EMS providers, suppliers, and competitors make use of. When everyone works with established IPC standards, then you will all speak one language, which is the global electronic industry language. Furthermore, making use of IPC standards gets rid of any confusion in employees, because they understand that they have to perform to reach the industry standards.
Improve the reputation of the market
IPC is widely regarded as a globally recognized standard. This is why working with the IPC standards will bring some industry credibility and recognition to you. Also, it could bring additional cooperation opportunities, as well as open markets for you.
Conclusion
Considering the quality standards majorly depends on the industry you are serving. In summary, we can describe the IPC 4101 vs IPC 4103 as industry guidelines for the base laminates of PCBs. When designers understand the content and structure, they will be able to choose the best laminate that provides support to the product’s final requirements.
