IPC (the Association Connecting Electronics Industries) released a new revision of the IPC-A-610 standard in Q2 2026 with significant changes to key acceptance criteria. For contract manufacturers and end customers, understanding these changes is critical to ensuring quality and acceptance alignment.
Key Changes
BGA ball voiding: Class 3 (high-reliability electronics) tightened BGA ball voiding limits: from ≤25% to ≤15% (per individual ball), plus a ball-to-pad interface voiding requirement of ≤5%. This change primarily impacts AI servers, automotive electronics, and medical devices — applications with stringent long-term reliability requirements.
QFN side termination solder rise height: The minimum solder rise height on QFN side pads has been raised from 50% to 75% of pad thickness. For the bottom thermal pad (Exposed Pad), an explicit voiding requirement of ≤25% has been introduced, with a recommendation for piece-by-piece X-Ray inspection.
Flexible printed circuit (FPC) solder joints: Independent acceptance criteria for FPC solder joints have been added — mandatory absence of micro-cracks at the root of the solder joint (inspected at 40x magnification), plus an optional bend reliability test (recommended: bend radius ≥5 mm, 50 cycles without electrical characteristic changes).
Impact on Contract Manufacturers
Implementing the new standard means technology upgrades for SMT lines:
• X-Ray inspection coverage — from sampling to 100% for critical components, especially BGA and QFN.
• More precise reflow thermal profile control and optimization to reduce solder voiding.
• Higher SPI (solder paste inspection) accuracy requirements, as tightened solder criteria demand consistency at the paste deposition stage.
• AOI algorithms must be updated to the new QFN and FPC criteria.
qisourcing Quality Commitment
All qisourcing SMT lines have already been reconfigured and upgraded to the new standard. Effective June 2026, all orders are processed per IPC-A-610 Rev. H (2026) Class 3: 100% BGA X-Ray inspection, dual inline SPI+AOI inspection, complete quality data package with every batch.
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