Introduction

At a meeting in February of 1989, the Institute for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronics Circuits (IPC) and the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) agreed to co-author a joint solderability test method. At subsequent joint meetings, many of the test method requirements were agreed upon, but an impasse was reached regarding steam age time and temperature.

The Steam Aging task group was started in April, 1989 following the Spring meeting of IPC. The ad hoc group was formed by members representing the IPC and the EIA to support the efforts of the Joint IPC/EIA Solderability Testing committee.

The goal of the group was to obtain the data on which to make a recommendation to the joint committee as to the temperature and time for steam aging preconditioning for solderability testing. It was necessary to define control levels which were satisfactory to both organizations.