Lead to lead free ROHS help?

Hi All,

Like everybody here in Europe we have to face lead-free components and solder from July 2006.

The list of exemptions (e.g.

is however interesting. Monitoring and control equipment is exempt, for example, and this could cover a LOT of stuff.

What I wonder however is whether this will be useful. Like similar scams (ISO9000 and CE being good examples) these tend to be run (in big companies, anyway) by less than brilliant people who are just damn grateful for having a job pushing bits of paper, and they will ignore the exemptions and demand literal compliance. It's like requiring a vendor of toilet paper to have ISO9000 - a common thing in many big firms where some d*****ad has built themselves an empire around this.

Would it be legal to issue a certificate of compliance which is false, but in fact the product would have been exempt anyway (or a convincing argument could be made for it to be exempt), or is a differently worded certificate mandatory in such cases? In general, for example in personal taxation in the UK if no tax is actually due, one cannot prosecute for a false declaration if nothing is actually wrong.

I am already seeing the expected alarmist news articles, coming out of the usual axe grinders, saying that a certificate of compliance will not be sufficient and that a purchaser needs to do a bit more (suprise, suprise, this is then explained as paying a specialist x-ray lab to physically verify) that the stuff one is buying is really lead-free.

It's the CE (EMC compliance) axe grinding circus all over again.

Any views?

Everyone with the money to employ someone to make out a case is applying for as many exemptions as they can get. Because the law is a total cockup from beginning to end, and was probably only carried through because someone thought they could please the environmental lobby and put a bit of trade protection in place at the same time.

I see that you can buy little testing kits that use a dye indicator to ceck for lead. Just what the idiots want, they'll sell thousands.

No. That's what the law is for. However, no one will enforce the law in most European countries. Only in Britain, where "manufacturing industry is oudated, we are in a post- industrial economy", will it be fully enforced. Elsewhere it will be used to do down competitors, check imports etc. etc.

All for a few hundred milligrams of lead. Which is safe anyway, that's why the lead lining of the Roman spring at Bath was still intact when they excavated it ( they sold the lead as scrap!).

I've already got an 8 week hold on a project because some connectors) single sourced, silly me) selected last December have suddenly disappeared. The manufacturer has not yet relaesed the RoHS version, and none of the distributors want to hold stocks of the leaded version, so I'm stuuffed until they get them in.

Paul Burke

Well I would think that you could not legally "issue a certificate of compliance which is false". However, it might not *be* false to say something with lead in it is "RoHS compliant" if it is the RoHS legislation *itself* that specifies the exceptions.

If it is anything like that, then we can expect the deadline to be delayed by several years... But in fact I think this will be different.

- the device manufacturers and distributors seem to be pushing it. I don't think they want to make/stock both lead and lead-free versions of product.

- Assemblers won't like to mix the processing because of the potential for cross-contamination. They will want to just go one way or the other.

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John Devereux

I have seen some manufacturers using the entire RoHS situation as an excuse to push customers into the 'latest' parts by discontinuing existing parts (that are non-RoHS compliant) with the (quite reasonable) excuse that they don't want the expense of upgrading every part, so they are only upgrading (if that's the word) the newer parts.

Of course, that simply means lots more work for engineers as most of these newer parts are not 100% form, fit, function compatible with their elder brethren.

Cheers

PeteS

And then there is the fact that a given "RoHS" part may have totally different and non-compatible dimensions compared to the "old" part... Just gloss over the additional possibility that other parameters may also cause havoc... BTW, put head in sand concerning the three different ways that tin can grow (shorting) shiskers...

Not just everyone in Europe but everyone who want to sell any electronics good to Europe i.e. China, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico etc etc.

Ian

Yes, and because of the hazards of mixing the two processes, and the disadvantages of maintaining twice as many product lines, it seems to me that everyone is going to have to go this way.

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John Devereux

Barry Lennox wrote: (snip)

I am willing to bet a significant sum that the answer is, "No."

that are wanting to stay with Pb and have solid exemptions (eg, the Military) are going to get on.

Bullets included and spreaded everywhere... Green is not Grrrr..een.

And the question shouldn't have been "if it turns out that tin whiskers ... affect reliability" but rather "when an event that kills a lot of attractive people can be traced to the growth of tin whiskers." The adverse impact on reliability is pretty much already established.

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Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

The exemptions could be useful, and I work with one company that could clearly claim an exemption. However, there are two problems:

A competitor will go lead-free and suddenly you are at a real marketing disadvantage, depending upon the markets desire for green wankola.

A large percentage of component vendors cannot be bothered with Pb and Pb-free parts and are simply changing to 100% Pb-free. I don't know how industries that are wanting to stay with Pb and have solid exemptions (eg, the Military) are going to get on.

You may get away with it, it will be some time before prosecutions are started, if ever.

Agree, the whole thing is a tub of crap, dreamed up by Bungling Brussels Eurocrats. There is. AFAIK, no evidence that lead leaches out of electronics. They are basing the whole thing on their "Precautionary Principle"

I have one question, if it turns out that tin whiskers and other (yet to be found) problems affect reliability, or that the Pb-free solder is toxic or environmentally damaging, will these Eurocrats be held accountable?

Barry Lennox

You have never heard of bismuth (esp used in duck hunting)??

I'm already aware of several reports of unreliability traceable to lead free soldering.

Graham

That's where we disagree.

Indeed. The Republican Congress has been both raiding the cookie jar, so our national debt rises dramatically each year (whereas it fell year after year under Clinton, but we'll ignore that), *and* they've been funding bridges to nowhere, as in the famous case of the Alaskan bridge, but you'll ignore that...

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 Thanks,
    - Win

Pooh Bear wrote

This is interesting. I gather the Japanese have been doing LF soldering for a number of years; their cheap disk drives are as visually perfect as one can get. What is the secret?

Is the unreliability related to PCB-level soldering? What exactly goes wrong?

I know SMT is a disaster looking for a place to happen anyway, and the process has to be spot on for a good yield. But if one gets whiskers growing between the pads of a 0.5mm pitch TSOP chip, that would be different...

Just as sidenote : Japan has introduced RoHS a decade ago with very little noise.

Rene

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Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

Japan better check up on its heavy metal toxicity. Bismuth is as bad a lead. Galena is even worse. I have been "arm chair quarterback" looking at the issue for about 15 years and cannot beat lead/tin solders.

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JosephKK

Excuse me, but bismuth is used in OTC antacid medication; an indication of the fact that it is NOT a problematic element. It is also used as a replacement for lead in birdshot for environment friendly users. And Galena *cannot* be worse, as it is lead ore (lead sulfide, if you must know).

Mmmmmmmm, cleavage...

;-P Thanks! Rich