RoHS => tin whiskers?

Clearly tongue-in-cheek comments are over your head.

the

Thus the safe option: Classify your product "Telecommunication", which is exempt!

What ever happened to Meat Loaf? He did some great stuff, Paradise by th Dashboard Lights, Roadie.

John

I gather that networking equipment is exempt too. Surprise surprise ( not ). I'm looking forward to pro-audio being exempt too. Surprised the video guys ( broadcast and film ) didn't ask.

Graham

Individual privacy must be supreme, there can be no question. Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice.

Human beings are not insects.

Thanks, Rich

Cheers! Rich

Hello Roy,

It's a serious problem and one that we humans hardly notice since we wear shoes. Plus I grew up in Europe where summer heat wasn't this intense. Now we always check our blacktop driveway and touch it with a hand. If too hot to keep the hand on the ground, no doggie walk (yet). The dogs become really pissy when that happens.

The other issue is dehydration. We humans know we should gulp down some water before a long walk but dogs get so excited that they forget. Luckily this is a nice neighborhood and some people place a bucket of fresh water near the curb on really hot days. Our rottie can slurp up half a gallon in one stretch. Then he needs a tree, badly.

Hello Michael,

It works like this: You pick one of the plans. The two that I use work like this:

a. Pay no daily fees or other fixed costs at all. First ten minutes per day are 25c/min, all the following ones on that day are 10c/min.

b. Pay 35c/day, then all air time is 10c/min.

You can switch back and forth. I did that and it worked. Default is plan a, then switched to b for biz trips where I know I am going to use it, afterwards back to a. No idea if Virgin likes me doing that but it was easy, took 15sec to do via Internet.

To keep the number you must "top up" every three month. That's $20 if using a store-bought phone card and AFAIK still $15 when using a credit card. That computes to $5/mo with a credit card or $6.67 with a Virgin prepaid phone card. Unless you talk a lot and need an earlier refill.

Hello Roy,

Must be a misunderstanding. I did not mention any $1/day plans. Virgin Mobile has higher cost plans available for times of very heavy usage (like if someone gets really sick at home) but you can revert to lower usage plans, no contract.

Most users adopt their lower tiers. Either no fees whatsoever and you pay 25c for the first 10 minutes per day, then 10c. Or you pay a 35c/day fee and all minutes are 10c. The nice thing is they let me switch so I can use that 35c/day fee plan only one heavy use days. Right now the phone just sits there and costs nothing. And that's exactly how I want it to be.

That's not the problem - most products I design are not under the scope of RoHS (part of fixed installations and automotive).

The problem are components only available in "leadfree" these days.

Oliver

Hello Oliver,

Are fixed installations generally exempt? That would be a nice option. Just provide a hole for a huge mounting bolt and call it "for fixed installation"... :-)))

AFAIK it's not such a problem to populate a traditional "leaded" board with a few RoHS parts and use leaded solder. The other way around can be a problem.

I just had that happen. Finished a design for a client and off to prototyping. Some of the transistors and two of the chips were only available as RoHS compliant. They soldered on with ease, almost easier than classic parts.

Hello Roy,

The really scary part is that nobody knows for sure what the exact mechanism is, yet some bureacrats to it upon themselves to declare that it's "going to be ok".

Remember when zinc chassis of WW2 gear suddenly fell apart upon the slightest tapping? I have seen that live, tap, tap, ka-crush. A chassis that looked perfect turned into a pile of powder. Another guy who saw that and who had relied on gear like that in mission-critical situations quietly muttered "oh s..t, that could have really done us in".

So you did manage to get a pay as you go service. That's what I use here. The calls are a bit pricier than yours but there's no requirement to have to top up on any regular basis on my tarriff.

Graham

But we'll get failures from tin whiskers even if we don't use lead-free solder.

If they can't fix the whisker thing, high-rel parts will have to go back to gold plating.

John

You could spray a bit of "Spra-Kleen" contact cleaner on a big polycarb thing and it would literally crumble to small chunks in a few seconds... *very* impressive.

John

Hello Graham,

Aren't you in the UK? Virgin has a similar deal there. AFAIK 15p/min the first five minutes each day, then 5p/min. Seems even better than on this side of the pond because we have to pay 25c for the first 10 minutes. IIRC yours is rounded to the next penny which is a much better deal than our rounding to minutes.

Similar phone deals, too. And you probably are going to get a GSM phone, we don't :-(

Well, hey, you learn something new every day!

So, if I understand correctly, you start with something like

Now... do unused minutes roll over? Or is that just the price one has to pay to get a $5/month phone service? ;-)

How's the reception in the Sacramento area?

Thanks for the tip,

Michael Darrett

up

Yes.

Just checked. That is indeed so. If I wanted, I could just buy a new sim card for less than the value of the included credit !

I'm with T-mobile currently and it's 12p/min to any UK number including mobiles which is quite good.

It certainly is. I made a call that lasted about 10 secs the other day and it only reduced my credit by next to nothing.

Even my 'old' mobile ( in perfect condition ) is GSM.

What's the deal with them over there ?

Graham