News

6-14-2010 Notice from Jack Crawford of the IPC: Please share the information as appropriate with your colleagues and anyone that you feel would benefit--in particular, any experienced IPC-A-600 CITs that would benefit from this beta or that you feel would contribute through their participation.

Trace Laboratories - Baltimore has been working on the new IPC-A-600H training programs for several months. Based on input from several A-600 technical training committee meetings, the new training will take a new approach both in presentation and in testing. The minutes of the April 7, 2010 meeting are copied below for your information.

The A-600H CIT beta class has now been scheduled. The length of training remains as three days and the dates are July 28-30 (Wednesday through Friday). Please--do not expect to be able to "leave early" on Friday. Beta courses always take a little longer to capture corrections and we need critique time to discuss recommendations from attendees.

The training will be conducted at:
TRACE LABORATORIES - Baltimore
5 North Park Drive
Hunt Valley, MD 21030
410-584-9099

Tuition for this course is $550--about half the CIT tuition charged by most training centers for the A-600 course. MIT attendees will receive priority shipping of the MIT and CIT kits just as soon as they are published (no additional cost). CIT attendees will also receive priority shipping on the CIT kits at that same time (no additional cost). To register, please contact Yolanda Russell; phone 410-229-4367 or yrussell@tracelabs.com.

HOTELS NEAR TRACE LABORATORIES - EAST --Embassy Suites Hotel, 213 International Circle, Hunt Valley, MD 21030 (410) 584-1400 Fax: (410) 584-7306 --Marriott Hunt Valley, 245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley, MD 21031 (410) 785-7000 Fax: (410) 785-0341

HOTELS NEAR BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT --BWI Marriott Hotel, 1743 West Nursery, Baltimore, MD 21240 (410) 859-8300 Fax: (410) 691-4555 --Sheraton International Hotel, BWI Airport, 7032 Elm Road, Baltimore, MD 21240 (410) 859-3300 Fax: (410) 859-0565

At this time, there are no plans for an International beta class, and no beta for a CIS beta class.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Meeting Minutes April 7, 2010 for IPC-A-600 Certification Technical Committee Chairman - Debora Obitz, Trace Laboratories, Inc. - MD Vice Chairman - Leo Lambert, EPTAC Corporation.

Renee Michalkiewicz, Trace Laboratories, presented an overview on a small portion of Module 4 training course layup for discussion on content, set up, and general format. The course layup will be designed to incorporate the information found in the 6012 and 6013 specifications so that you will understand the criteria in the governing specifications (IPC-6012 and IPC-6013) as well as the IPC-A-600 document that is the pictorial complimentary document. There will also be two tests for the CIT to challenge and insure that the instructors are not remembering the answer patterns during correction of the CIT questions (the test exams will be rotated every two years).

Debora Obitz presented an overview showing the types of questions to expect in the supplied tests. We will utilize photograph in lieu of the verbiage (that make up the current tests), since we received numerous comments that the test was seeing if a person could read versus if they understood the potential defect and could determine accept/nonconformance to the specification.

Constructive comments:
--Target condition - it may not be necessary to add in the training course --Add the English conversion to all information as the specification docs --May want to change the background slightly to insure easy to read verbiage --Use the same font and size - Jack Crawford will supply a template --Always use black or dark blue for all verbiage --Only show a small photo of the condition to be evaluated so that it will not be confusing as to what the student is evaluating for each question.


Jack Crawford, IOM
IPC Director Certification and Assembly Technology IPC - Association Connecting Electronics Industries(r)
3000 Lakeside Drive
Suite 309 S
Bannockburn, IL, 60015
847-597-2893
FAX 847-615-5693
jackcrawford@ipc.org
www.ipc.org