At the EMPF Learning Center, a variety of courses are available for personnel skills development and IPC certification. The courses that are offered at our Philadelphia facility include Certified IPC Trainer (CIT) for IPC A 610D, J STD 001D, IPC A 600G, and IPC 7711/7721B as well as Certified IPC Specialist (CIS) for IPC/WHMA A 620A. The Learning Center also offers training in topics such as BGA Manufacturing, Rework, and Inspection; Lead Free Manufacturing; Electronics Manufacturing Boot Camp; and Failure Analysis and Reliability Testing. The schedule for these courses can be accessed via the EMPF website (www.empf.org).
In addition to the regularly scheduled courses, the EMPF also offers customized training to interested companies. Courses that require the use of the equipment in the EMPF Demonstration Factory will be offered at the EMPF, but when large manufacturing equipment is not required, courses can also be delivered at any location. The EMPF can provide hand tools and soldering equipment at a customer’s location as well as the audio/visual equipment required to provide lectures.
The main types of customized courses that are available are Certified IPC Specialist courses. These courses are designed in a modular manner, which allows the training topics to be chosen to meet the specific needs of the students. For example, the J STD 001 CIS course includes five modules: General Requirements, Wires and Terminals, Through-Hole, Surface Mount, and Inspection (Figure 6-1). Companies can choose as few as one or as many as five of the modules of instruction. Generally, companies choose between two and four (General Requirements is required for all other modules). All of the other IPC CIS courses are designed in a similar manner, allowing companies a great deal of
flexibility when choosing to certify their personnel.
The EMPF can also provide customized versions of other courses to suit specific needs. For example, a one-week version of the Electronics Manufacturing Boot Camp was delivered for a manufacturer of printed circuit boards (PCB). In order to better understand their customers’ use of their product, the course was customized for training on electronics assembly processes rather than PCB manufacturing since that is one of their core competencies. The class was able to use the manufacturing equipment as part of the course, which allowed a better understanding of the areas where their customers’ assembly processes could affect the quality and reliability of the PCBs they manufacture.
The EMPF can also customize a course to focus on specific equipment. For example, if a company has just purchased a BGA rework machine that is also represented in the EMPF Demonstration Factory, the EMPF can deliver a customized BGA Manufacturing, Rework, and Inspection course that uses that specific piece of equipment. The topic coverage would be the same in the lecture portion of the class, but the students would receive an opportunity to apply those skills using the equipment they will be expected to use at their own facility. This type of customization is also available at a company’s facility as long as the equipment at the facility doesn’t differ significantly from the equipment at the EMPF.
Another example of a customized class is a course entitled “Lead Free Manufacturing in a Production Environment.” This course is designed to introduce lead-free soldering processes to factory personnel. Using the standard Lead Free Manufacturing course as a basis, this course is delivered in a single day at the customer’s factory rather than the standard two days at the EMPF. The custom course focuses on the practical impact of the introduction of lead-free solders on processes without dwelling on some of the material science details that can be superfluous for assemblers and technicians. The custom course also provides time for the students to perform some hand soldering projects under the guidance of the instructor to introduce familiarity with the properties of lead-free solders. Further customization could include more technical details rather than a hand soldering project. In that case, more time could be spent on topics that aren’t normally pertinent for assemblers such as the effects of tin whiskers or comparing long-term reliability of lead-free solders to tin-lead solders.
The EMPF can customize any course to suit any organization’s requirements. IPC certification courses can be customized to provide training on the specific technologies that a company employs. Customizations can be provided to fit a schedule or to suit the required topic coverage for a company’s personnel or to focus on specific
equipment. If you are interested in a custom course, contact the EMPF Registrar at 610.362.1200, extension 250.
