Every advantage has its disadvantage
In the new/latest revisions of the IPC-WHMA-620D Requirements and Acceptance for Cable and Wire Harness Assemblies and IPC-A-610H Acceptability of Electronic Assemblies the term TARGET and the pictures to this have disappeared.
Advantage:
The main reason for removing the Target conditions was to prevent that companies that assemble electronic products and produce products/connections which are Acceptable, no longer rework them to achieve the Target condition. Because by doing so they might improve the cosmetic looks of the product, but in general electrically/mechanically the product gets worse.
Consider the example of a solder connection. An acceptable solder connection that is reworked might improve cosmetically, but by reheating the solder connection the intermetallic layer grows, making the connection more brittle and thus less reliable.
Disadvantage:
Removing the Target criteria and the accompanying pictures from the standards for visual inspection leads to the fact that an operator who just started using the standard has no idea anymore on what the perfect or Target situation would be.
After all, this is no longer in the IPC standards for visual inspection. However my opinion is that an operator initially should always try to achieve a Target connection. In any case this is explained during the training on the various standards, so that in any case the operator takes this with him in his “luggage”.
