Spec QQ-P-416 and AMS-QQ-P-416?

A. Hello Darrel!

QQ-P-416 is a federal specification, and is still active even though SAE jumped the gun and issued AMSQQP416. You can get a copy by going to assist.daps.mil [ed.note 2003: this address is outdated, see below response for updated address], clicking on the quicksearch button, and typing in the number. There will be separate pdf files for the base spec and the amendments.

Good luck!

A. We dislike printing link addresses on these pages for that reason. They close down an address instead of providing a proper redirect, and then hundreds of our threads need updating.

But the updated address is assist2.daps.dla.mil/quicksearch/ -- I've just checked it and it works today. Good luck.

Ed update 2013: the correct current address is quicksearch.dla.mil

! I wish you only good things for you, Root, but in a way I'm sort of happy that you haven't been successful in downloading these specs for free which American businesses paid for! You can immediately get a copy of the current spec the free-enterprise way by paying for the download at https://www.sae.org/standards/content/amsqqp416/. Good luck!

opinion! It infuriates me that U.S. politicians pressure beltway bandits for large political donations, then they return those donations a hundredfold by rewarding them with federal contracts. In this case, which may or may not involve beltway bandits, American small businesses are taxed the cost of a "free" website, which is then offered to their off-shore competitors for free. When American manufacturing jobs are the collateral damage for this free leg up which is offered to foreign competition, tough. But, as you see, stuff which is funded that way never works for long anyway (unlike our links all of which, going back to 1994, are still maintained :-)

! Not too long after FED, MIL and DOD documents were made available free of charge by the government via the internet many of these documents were turned over to institutions such as ASTM and SAE (AMS) which charge for providing copies (hard or electronic). One such case is QQ-P-416 which is now AMSQQP416. The historical document which may still be available on the DOD-assist site is no longer valid. Absurdly AMS took the QQ spec which was up to revision F and labelled it revision A. They are now up to revision C (C corrects a publishing error in B). It is not intuitively obvious that B and C are later revisions than F. It will be interesting when they eventually reach E (still valid for some aerospace customers) and F for the AMS-QQ-416 particularly since many drawings still specify QQ without the AMS prefix.

Hi. Aryeh. The current address for free mil specs is quicksearch.dla.mil

Regards,

Hi Robert. QQ-P-416 was last revised in 2000 and was canceled in 2002. But I don't see any "Class A" -- I see only Class 1, 2, and 3.

Regards,

Ted,
Your link has expired, you should use this instead:
https://quicksearch.dla.mil/qsDocDetails.aspx?ident_number=51006

The 2002 cancellation notice gives the replacement as SAE AMS QQ-P-416, which no doubt originated as a straight-up copy of the Mil spec but has gone through a few revisions since. It could be that "class A" was introduced in the SAE version at some point.

https://standards.sae.org/amsqqp416d/

Regardless, the best thing might be to ask the customer which version of QQ-P-416 they are going off of and what paragraph number contains the information relevant to what they are asking for.

Ed. note: Thanks Ray. We've updated the link yet again.

A. Jeremy,
As you might have gleaned from the above responses, the online mil spec site only goes back to the 1991 F revision. You might try contacting the Defense Logistics Agency directly to see if they have and can send to you the older versions.

A. Hi Jeremy

The overall rule is to work to the latest spec.

However, your customer may have a valid reason for using an earlier version. You should always ask for confirmation in writing.

If the customer demands a non standard spec, ask for a copy

Standardizations Division of the Navy said they did not keep the old revisions of the spec, but referred me to IHS (Information Handling Service). I found the original version of the spec from 1949 there for $30. I ordered it and confirmed that CLASS A, B, and C, were changed into CLASS 1, 2, and 3.

In other words:
CLASS A and CLASS 1 = .0005" thick
CLASS B and CLASS 2 = .0003" thick
CLASS C and CLASS 3 = .0002" thick

Ed. note: Thanks so much, Jeremy!

A. Annie,
Just my interpretation here, but let's break it down:

"Lot shall consist of plated articles of the same basis metal composition, class, and type"

One lot can't have parts of different substrate materials, that's pretty standard.

"plated and treated under the same conditions"

Unless there's another mil spec that defines "same conditions" for us, this is enormously open to interpretation. But one should at least be able to argue that parts run through the same bath on the same day using the same parameters (time, temp, etc., concentrations maintained as needed) are using the same conditions.

"and submitted for inspection at one time"

Self explanatory.

I would say that you should be able to split your single lot into 30 batches for processing and retain it as one lot, or perhaps split into 2 or 4 or 6 lots if that's easier for you.