During your selection of conformal coating you ran in to a specification that you have seen before but not fully understood, MIL-I-46058C. Conformal coating choices are vast, but with so many available, how does a user pick the correct one? Are there minimum standards that define what a conformal coating is supposed to do? Thankfully, yes there are. This article will focus on one such standard: MIL-I-46058C.
The official title for the specification is MIL-I-46058C, Insulating Compound (For Coating Printed Circuit Assemblies). The standard serves as a material standard, used to evaluate and document that a particular coating meets a list of specific performance attributes (more on those later). The MIL-I-46058C was developed to define a uniform set of test methods and performance requirements for conformal coatings and gives users confidence that the material they select will perform.
