lead free solder again

"Barry Lennox" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

In many places you don't even have landfills. The rubbish is partly recycled and the rest is burned. The question is, where does all the lead end up?

That 37 degrees is a silly argument. The total amount of energy needed to solder a board is peanuts, even if needed to be soldered at +100 degrees.

Time will tell.

Sure did I hear about it. But I was not able to read the original Swatch report. Anyone knows where to find it? All I heard about it, were second hand stories, rather confusing. Allegedely Swatch did use SnCu solder, although SnCuAg seems to be the industry standard elsewhere. Maybe Swatch just chose the wrong solder? Furthermore I heard that the Swatch reports talks about tensile stresses as main reason for whisker growth - which would be contradictory to the research literature. It is agreed on that compressive stress is one of the main driving forces for whisker growth. So not having enough information, the "Swatch" issue rises more questions than answers. Sure Swatch apparently has a problem with lead free production, but I don't think the swatch issue is sufficient to conclude, that everyone and all electronics manufacturer will face the same problems.

Don't know for sure, just guessing. First of all, most of the consumer electronics waste in the EU ends in a incinerator. Lead and the other banned RoHS substances are a problem here.

I don't see anything wrong with getting rid of unhealthy substances. There might be more promissing areas than lead in solder, but this doesn't make it wrong to attack lead. Certainly, industry will not take action on its own. So some external force must become active.

Since when can you sue a democratic elected representative? They just passed a bill we may not like, they didn't commit a crime!

Klaus

It doesn't tend to get burnt in Europe which is where the legislation currently applies. So the point is moot.

In any case, waste is dealt with under WEEE.

That's not what the board stuffers say.

Oh it will for sure.

Graham

In article , Frank Bemelman wrote: [....]

On the other hand, the point of a tin whisker may be the sharpest thing in the universe. Depending on how the crystal is growing the point may be one atom thick.

So why not widen it to include all electronics? Can you find a dividing line?

growth

You are *joking* ! ??

No it doesn't at all !

And how many components wil faill prematurely due to the higher baking temp ? This is frankly relatively unknown territory.

Early results show degraded product reliability. Largely due to the poorer joint that lead-free soldering produces.

Not everyone's using aerospace parts btw !

Graham

You know how to use Google ?

Not so. The silver containing alloys are considerably more expensive.

Graham

In article , Jon wrote: [....]

No, the lead in car batteries is not "kept out of the environment". Only majority of it gets recycled. There is still some leakage into the environment.

The recycling is done basically like this:

(1) Ship the batteries to some 3rd world country.

(2) Pull the plugs and drain the acid on the dirt.

(3) Make a big pile of them and cover them with gasoline and throw a match at them.

(4) After the plastic and spacers have all burned away put whats left into a big pot.

(5) Cut down some rain forest to make fire wood to heat said pot.

(6) Have the women and children scrape all the junk the rises to the top off.

(7) Pour the melt in to molds

(8) Ship the recycled lead to the battery factory.

(9) Tell people "it recycled so its ok"

I'm just pointing out that's its having negative environmental effects which is somewhat ironic.

Of course it's a hassle esp for smaller companies who are supposed to maintain utterly unrealistic quantities of records ro prove their product is lead-free for one thing and the relative uncertainties about the soldering process which hits smaller companies without vast engineering departments harder.

Well, we're not all in the same boat. Smaller companies will be worst hit.

It has no surface tension to help wetting for one thing.

I just read btw that lead-free is actually meant to make waste recycling easier and is supposed to be the main motivation for RoHS..

I frankly can't see what there is in modern eelctronics that can be usefully recycled once it's soldered to a pcb anyway. By far the best thing to do is indeed dump it.

Graham

Don't you really expect me to answer that question?

So what, just lots of second hand information.

Trying to save a few cents at the wrong place?

Klaus

If you follow it up you'll probably get to it. I know I found plenty of detail last time I looked.

The bulk of the info I've seen relates to SnCu. It's definitely the one being most used.

Graham

"Eeyore" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@REMOVETHIS.hotmail.com...

Perhaps because that gives the most problems.

Perhaps the one being most mentioned?

In 2002 already 5-10% of consumer products used lead free solder.

"Ken Smith" schreef in bericht news:e92ur3$qh0$ snipped-for-privacy@blue.rahul.net...

It was at maximum width before ROHS. That didn't work, too much lead in undesireable places. The minimum width is 0, which is not yet practical -> exemptions.

Perhaps Swatch can start making mechanical watches, if they can't solve what others have solved in a heartbeat.

And much the same will happen with the WEEE directive as it applies to scrap electronics (if we're lucky!) - much like the fridge mountain fiasco in the UK directly resulting from legislation without forethought, scrap fridges were supposed to be "decommissioned" (controlled removal of CFC gas) - which no one wanted anything to do with so the mountains of scrap fridges just grew and grew!!!

Hello Klaus,

With one BIG difference: RoHS is government mandated, going to China is every company's choice.

BTW, some of my designs are produced in China. A few of them since more than a decade. No problems and excellent quality. You must select a proper facility to contract with, just like in every other country.

You just said it: "...it is believed...". Eurocrats probably have no clue what they just brought upon mankind. Time will tell. When it goes wrong I guess they'll have their fat taxpayer funded retirement benefits and no worries.

The chance of that happening will increase with a decreasing quality or durability of solder joints. Worst case an accident happens, best case the thing quits when it's below zero and some pipes freeze and burst.

Not the ones I buy.

They, or organizations such as Consumer Affairs, will rather quickly figure out what lasts and what doesn't. In the same way they did with cars. There are certains brands I and others will not buy. We also pay close attention to where something is assembled and prefer merchandise from one area over others.

Every company I design for has a full quality control system. Else I wouldn't design for them. Yes, there are some consumer products where I have the impression that they are shipped "as is". I buy from those companies exactly once, if that, and then never again.

Hello Joerg,

I don't see the big difference. Marketforces dictate going to China. Once consumers find out, that the cheap buy in the long run wasn't so cheap anyway, the company sticking to quality products is likely out of business. Both cases are in my point of view external forces one has to react to. Not going to China is like chosing not to sell in the EU - same degree of freedom.

While I certainly agree on that it is possible to produce good products in China, I'd still say, that on average it has become harder to find decent electronics products, especially in the consumer product scene. Moving the production to China is perhaps not the cause but only the symptom for the general tendency that the end user price has become the singular criterion for sales success.

This probably holds also for the CEO's etc. ruining a good company for their and their stakeholders short term profit - I'm thinking of Enron or the downturn of HP for example... Without wanting to start a political discussion, I have to add the statement, that according to democratic theory the so called Eurocrats are doing what people want them to do. Hence, it is the European people bringing RoHS on mankind. I'm not saying that it will go without problems (no none knows yet), but again they are doing what they are expected to do and have hence "earned" their retirement benefits - at least according to theory :-)

True. I'm not saying that life becomes easier, but I think it is the engineering task to adapt to new challenges, which in this case means one has to handle RoHS on a technical level. If RoHS imposes higher risk of failure one has to take countermeasures. Makes things more complicated and more expensive, but again this is a foreseeable challenge, it would be bad engineering to design and produce electronics as we always did and then blaming "Eurocrats" for the failure of our products. The information is available for years.

Klaus

Hello Klaus,

It doesn't? Eurocrats have an uncanny tendency to dump out the kid with the bath water.

Oh, another idea for them: To curb pollution they could mandate that the sale of car tires be prohibited.

That's exactly the problem. On the contrary, even if voters (hopefully) kick them out they can still be assured that the same voters pay them a fat retirement benefit.

Hello,

Nobody forces anyone to go to China. Very different from RoHS. In fact, why do you think that Japanese cars for the US market are still manufactured in Japan or at very tightly controlled US factories? Both are high-wage countries and the cars cost substantially more than models produced in low-wage countries. Are those companies going out of business? Au contraire, they are enjoying the best profits of them all. Other companies that did outsource aren't faring that well. The consumer hath spoken.

Not going to China is like chosing not to sell in the EU -

Absolutely not. The EU has placed a legislative roadblock in the way. Except that this time it will likely backfire.

ROFL! Almost spilled my glass of water here ... you don't seriously believe that, do you?

Democratic theory, yes. Reality, no. Just follow the discussions that happened in some of the European usenet forums.

It may be too late by then. When failures in installed gear reach epidemic proportions you'll have a whole lot of unhappy campers. While they may now be oblivious then they'll want to know who dunnit.

Like, where?

I think a good entry point is:

Galyon, G.T., "Annotated tin whisker bibliography and anthology", IEEE Trans. Electronics Packaging Manufacturing, Vol. 28, Iss. 1, 94-122

A very useful overview article with an almost complete list of ~100 references.

Klaus

Hello Klaus,

Ok, thanks. Got that paper now but will have to study a little later since I just received a box of prototypes for debug. Full of 0402, not exactly fun. Luckily assembled on a non-RoHS line so no whiskers ;-)