Bannockburn, Ill. — IPC — Association Connecting Electronics Industries has released its updated materials declaration standard to keep up with changes in environmental regulations including the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical Substances (REACH) Regulation and China’s RoHS-type regulation. It also makes the standard format easier to use.
The IPC-1752A revision provides an updated and expanded industry-wide reporting format for material declaration data exchange between companies in the electronics supply chain. It also allows additional substance restrictions to be added more efficiently through either existing or new regulations, said IPC.
The updated standard also has been modularized so it’s easier for companies to pick and choose the sections relevant to them.
A key change in the new standard is the focus on the definition of the data fields and structure through the XML (extensible markup language) schema. “In the past, we’ve provided both the schema and a software tool through Adobe Acrobat to enter data,” said Mark Frimann, a product stewardship manager at Texas Instruments and co-chairman of the IPC 2-18 subcommittee that oversees the standard, in a statement.
“As a standards subcommittee, we’re getting out of the software business. To improve the capabilities of the standard with version 2.0, the subcommittee chose to focus efforts on the schema changes and open up any software development to third party software providers.”
The committee has been working closely with third-party software developers to ensure the development of implementation tools supporting the 1752A materials data exchange. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already developed a basic and free open source product called Scriba, which is a Java-based tool that supports all the major features of IPC-1752A. Others are expected to launch products soon.
While Scriba doesn’t handle database storage, users who need that function can buy commercial software or create their own database management system using XML schema, said IPC.
The first copies of IPC-1752A, Materials Declaration Management, will be available for purchase in the IPC Bookstore at IPC APEX EXPO, booth 2073 or for free download at www.ipc.org/175x.