Like just about everyone else, we are looking the how we are going to migrate to lead free manufacturing.
Our pcb fabricator currently offers Chemical Ni/Au plated or OSP pcbs.
In our case, we use a mixture of hand soldering (SMT) and automation.
My only experience with tin plating was horrible.
Does anyone have a strong point of view on this topic?
-- Al Clark Danville Signal Processing, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Purveyors of Fine DSP Hardware and other Cool Stuff Available at http://www.danvillesignal.com
Do elaborate.
Yup.
RoHS is a piece of crap with regard to electronics manufacture. The telecoms industry, and network and server ppl being let off the hook is a disgrace.
Lets face it, if *they* can't make stuff work reliably lead free, who can ?
I gather tin whiskering still isn't fully understood.
Graham
As one who moved back to my native UK a year ago, I had to come up to speed on ROHS in a hurry (and made all the mistakes one might expect).
For BGA packages, I use Ni/Au finishes (because they have better coplanarity characteristics) which work well for IR reflow, I have had no failures due to soldering failures within 6 months [I know that's not a long time] using lead free lines with this finish, although I am using a CM that invested in the proper line equipment. As I rarely have anything without a BGA, that's my preferred finish.
It *is* more expensive, but the cost is coming down.
There is a report by AMD on this subject:
Cheers
PeteS
Pooh Bear wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com:
acan
The whole world is being forced to move to lead free (Thank you EU). This is going to create a whole lot of problems in my view that go beyond soldering. For example, I have already seen some legacy products discontinued just because the manuafacturer doesn't want to repackage the part. They might have continued the part if they weren't forced to go lead free.
Almost all of us compete in a world market. This means that everything will move to lead free since we can't avoid Europe. The network guys, etc have the advantage that they can still use lead solder and solder plating on their pcbs.
I agree that ROHS sucks and will probably cost our industry many billions of $, euros, etc.
Nevertheless, we are still forced to comply. So I go back to my original question:
Ni/Au, OSP or ?
-- Al Clark Danville Signal Processing, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Purveyors of Fine DSP Hardware and other Cool Stuff Available at http://www.danvillesignal.com
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