OT: RoHS and Lead?

Roel wrote in news:dq9g76$ndq$1 @news4.zwoll1.ov.home.nl:

and

would

I agree its not just about lead. Removing all the lead from circuit boards is not going to have a big impact on the environment.

may

This is a very bad start. Products are either completely exempt due in part to reliability concerns or they are subject to zero tolerance.

I think a reasonable plan that reduced the lead content would be much better than a total ban. If I have one 0603 non RoHS resistor on my board, the board is probably am not in compliance. As I understand it, if a company in the EU has existing inventory, they can continue to use it (provided it is already in Europe). I'm supposed to throw away all my lead based inventory (in a landfill?), and in many cases, completely redesign my product.

It is still hard to buy many components lead free, even when they theoretically exist.

I have a connector that I buy maybe 3000 pieces a year of. The mfr of this part will make it lead free if I purchase 20000 pieces! I can't even tell that the part has any lead content. Its entirely gold plated. My guess is that it is in the plastic.

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Al Clark
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Al Clark
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Jim Granville wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@clear.net.nz:

This is the first that I have heard of this. Can you point to the a reference?

In other words, cheat?

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Al Clark
Danville Signal Processing, Inc.
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Reply to
Al Clark

In the RoHS docs, they talk about what lead-content items are exempt, and also comment this is subject to availability of no practical alternative. ie if the alternative is that without this item, the product cannot exist. Some solders are included in this. The exemptions seem to be growing every time I read them....

No. "lead free" does not mean 0.00% Lead.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

ahh.. Anybody who doesn't consider the environment is a fool. You may say a million years is too far to consider.. but it only is if you don't think Humanity will kill itself off by then. Did you know over a million children a year die in Asia due to air pollution? How about by the time they reach

20 the air quality has reduced their lifespan by 5 years ? Its important to care about what we put into the atmosphere or into our ground. The main problem is the lobby groups.. I'd say the battery makers have a better lobby group than the electronics. Or it would be an offence to dump any kind of battery by now, you would have to take them to an approved recycler that has sufficient protection on its plant to avoid contamination of the surrounding area.

Protect the planet.. its the only one we've got. Don't rely on finding another to pollute :-)

Simon

Reply to
Simon Peacock

I believe that in Germany you can't get a new car battery unless you take the old one back. I heard they get >99% recycling this way. Cheers, Syms.

Reply to
Symon

Exactly what I thought when I saw the post ...

Come on, at the rate we're going I expect no more than a few hundred years ...

Sylvain

Reply to
Sylvain Munaut

Some info in this presentation particularly with respect to long-life critical systems.

"The Negative Impact of Lead-Free Products on Aerospace and Military Electronics Reliability" Andrew D. Kostic1 and Charlie Minter2

1 Northrop-Grumman 2 BMPCOE/Willcor

2004 MAPLD International Conference September, 2004, Washington, D.C.

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rk, Just an OldEngineer
"The number of people having any connection with the project must be
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rk

Ahem.. Europe's a major market - it's more than European companies that are affected :)

Jeremy

Reply to
Jeremy Stringer

Any sensible country recycles lead acid batteries and issues horrendous fines for dumping them.

I have no idea where you live, but over here, we don't have leaded paint, nor leaded waterpipes anymore. They were ruled out decades ago.

That indeed is the aim. As long as electronics was produced in little numbers it wasn't considered a problem. But now with a mobil phone costing 1$, you can bet they end up being thrown away rather quickly.

Rene

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Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
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Reply to
Rene Tschaggelar

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with trying to plan for a million years in the future. If it's true, it's a current problem, and needs a current solution.

I never said otherwise.

But spending a lot of effort trying to eliminate a source of polution that is only a tiny part of the problem, while ignoring other sources that are a much larger fraction, will not accomplish anything useful.

The planet doesn't need protecting. It was here billions of years before us, and will be here billions of years after us, regardless of what we do.

Reply to
Eric Smith

Don't worry.

Military electronics is not covered by the RoHS directive. ;-)

Reply to
al82

That's how it is in some parts of the EU already. In Germany, all batteries must be taken back by the manufacturer to be disposed of/recycled properly. That means that you can (actually, you HAVE to) return empty batteries to the store you bought them at, and they send 'em back to the manufacturers, who in turn have to deal with them properly (as required by law). Theoretically, you can be fined if someone finds old batteries in your trash. Not that anyone really is looking...

Some more examples from Germany: Every store is required to take back packaging materials. It's not uncommon for people in supermarkets to start ripping off cardboard boxes and blister packages from the stuff they just bought and leave it in the store. Every major store has recycling bins for paper and plastic for that purpose. I guess this was supposed to motivate manufacturers to use less packaging, hasn't really worked...

Last year, they introduced refundable deposits for most cans and plastic bottles. So now you pay a little something extra for every can of soda or beer, and have to return the empty ones to the store to get the deposit back. This is supposed to motivate people to buy their stuff in reusable glass bottles instead of throw-away cans and plastic bottles. Of course there were some loopholes, and the whole thing caused more ruckus than it did good.

So, now that stores have to take back batteries and packaging materials, the next step was to make them take back electronics as well. Now all electronic devices can be returned to the stores, who in turn have to take care of proper recycling (as required by law). And this implies that the stuff indeed CAN be recyled, which in turn requires manufacturers to use minimal amounts of hazardous materials to at least make the process easier.

Of course we could instead keep doing what we do now and send the stuff to India and China by the shipload for them to rip it apart with bare hands on unprotected soil... That's another way to return it to where it was made...

cu, Sean

Reply to
Sean Durkin

I would agree with you here Simon, but would prefer to see efforts targeted where they are going to do the most good.

In the power point presentation from 2004 MAPLD that rk posted the link to..

"Texas Instruments (TI) is a $9.83B electronics component manufacturer that sells millions of devices all over the world. They estimate that complete conversion to lead-free products woud result in an annual worldwide lead reduction equivalent to TEN automobile batteries".

It hardly seems the best place to start wasting $100sB of people's time and effort to reduce the environmental impact by this amount.

Nial.

Reply to
Nial Stewart

Airbus.

Reply to
rk

On a sunny day (16 Jan 2006 01:15:40 -0800) it happened "al82" wrote in :

Yea, as in that field, bullets are no longer made of lead but of depleted uranium,. Some people claim it is very safe. Cannot use it for soldering, >1300 Celcius melting point. But plutonium perhaps? 640 C. There is already too much of it,

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so put it to good use.....

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

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It's best to save DU to use as ballast in the back of Boeing 747s. See:-

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DU is used because it's cheaper than Tungsten. Cheers, Syms.

Reply to
Symon

rk ha escrito:

Most of the Airbus electronics is not covered by the RoHS directive either.

Only the communications equipment (and I'm not sure).

The list of categories that the RoHS applies to is:

Categories of electrical and electronic equipment covered by Directive

2002/95/EC
  1. Large household appliances
  2. Small household appliances
  3. IT and telecommunications equipment
  4. Consumer equipment
  5. Lighting equipment
  6. Electrical and electronic tools (with the exception of large-scale stationary industrial tools)
  7. Toys, leisure and sports equipment
  8. Automatic dispensers

Categories 8 and 9 :

  1. Medical devices (with the exception of all implanted and infected products)
  2. Monitoring and control instruments are covered by Directive 2002/96/EC but not by 2002/95/EC (RoHS)
Reply to
al82

[ snip ]

The question is when only lead-free components are available or when they get slid in over time unintentionally during maintanence, upgrades, or new production runs of equipment years after the initial build. I think that the device manufacturers should have distinct part numbers (perhaps in the suffix) that unambiguously identify the plating. This is an accident waiting to happen.

Reply to
rk

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