Swatch kills RoHS

Pooh Bear wrote

There is a huge exemption for "control and monitoring" equipment.

If I read the (UK) electronics trade press, I see a hysterical article every week saying how important ROHS is and how it will be strictly enforced from day 1, by Govt inspectors.

Of course the trade press is "owned" by its advertisers who are mostly component suppliers and they want everybody to get rid of their "obsolete" component stocks, to end the famine which has existed in the supply business for a few years now.

The other day they ran a feature on the "control systems loophole" and how terrible it is. I wrote to their editor immediately, asking him why he is behaving like an ROHS police officer and is not supporting the countless small companies who rely on this exemption to be able to continue to make their products. Of course he never replied.

Anyway, the funny thing is that I contract out my pick/place assembly; do a LOT of it too. None of my 3 contractors have implemented lead-free soldering! They tell me all their customers are exempt!! :)

I guess that ROHS will go the way of the CE mark - a great job creation scheme for lazy useless people who can't do any more than push bits of paper. It's better than CE; with CE you had to put a "CE" sticker on everything. With ROHS, there is no required marking of any kind, so Customs cannot check compliance.

My products have to work for 10-20 years, in industrial situations. I won't be changing to lead-free anytime soon.

The Swatch experience is scary; I use lots of sub-0.8mm pitch TSOPs.