USA and Australia vs. the World!

I make a board that is used in this CTP2000 line of equipment.

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They required my board to be RoHS when it was designed, I suppose so in the future they could use it in fully RoHS systems. However. the mother board my boards plug into and the rest of the chassis is not RoHS I am told. This equipment is not sold in Europe of course, but I see on their page they talk about selling it in Australia. Does Australia not require RoHS? I guess I never thought about it much, but how much of the world does require RoHS outside of the EU?

Reply to
Rick C
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søndag den 8. august 2021 kl. 02.40.35 UTC+2 skrev snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com:

lots of countries outside EU have regulations similar to ROHS

Reply to
Lasse Langwadt Christensen

No, Australia doesn't require RoHS, but it is a small market, so most stuff here is RoHS anyway because it was designed primarily for another market and just happens to be available here too.

There is also no organised collection of ewaste other than TVs and consumer PCs. Everything else, if you want it not to get landfilled then it's up to you to find and pay for someone to dispose of it better, and good luck proving that this will be done.

Reply to
Chris Jones

The US has similar RoHS regulations, basically copied from the EU, but many application domains are effectively exempt, basically because tin whiskers promptly defeat safety, reliability, and service-life requirements. I would hope that the EU has similar exemptions.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joe Gwinn

Those who invented and made that RoHS nonsense a legal fact must be crucified, hung, decapitated, tortured then buried alive, that in an unending cycle. My vocabulary for that in English is way too poor to express myself, too bad there is no point doing it in my native Bulgarian....

Reply to
Dimiter_Popoff

China and they are more strict about it than we in Europe. I think if your cover China-ROHS you cover everything.

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However you should start to think about it very quickly. We did not buy any part with the correct paper for ROHS in Europe. I remember about many funny discussion with american companys (like Analog for example) in the past.

Olaf

Reply to
olaf

Perhaps for military airplane or something like this. But not for normal industrial use.

Olaf

Reply to
olaf

One would have to wonder if those wonderful Chinese RoHS regulations are enforced in any way. Right along with CE (in the EU) and UL (in the US).

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joe Gwinn

China laws are enforced if it's beneficial to the party, otherwise not.

Reply to
Ed Lee

What are these US regulations? The CTP2000 product line is not RoHS and won't meet anyone else's similar standards either since they used leaded solder and other substances banned by the EU RoHS standards. Many applications they are sold into are not exempted. So how can they be sold in the US if there are US standards similar to RoHS?

Reply to
Rick C

From my experience, if some chinese company don't have the ROHS for european, they only need one day to print it. Is this an answer? :-D

Olaf

Reply to
olaf

I hated it to start with, but it has turned out less bad than I expected and I don't mind using lead-free now. If we accept that most consumer electronics is utter trash designed to fail (often via software) and then be discarded within a year or two, then RoHS makes sense for those products. Of course I would prefer that this situation didn't occur.

Reply to
Chris Jones

Chris Jones wrote: ================

** Wonder if the UK will now allow the use of tin/lead solder in products made, sold and imported there.

Or continue to dine on unpalatable Euro sausages .....

..... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

Chris Jones wrote: ================

** Really?

There is no such thing as "lead free". Its like " Cholesterol free" and " MSG free". A meaningless buzz word.

I can find no affordable RoHs approved solder that actually works.

Use 60/40 solder ( Savbit ) for everything.

Pb free is one of the craziest ideas ever, no real science just total bollocks.

Anyone for a Eurosausage ??

...... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

I don't do much soldering as electronics is just a hobby now that I am retired. A few years ago I thought that to repair the lead free stuff I needed lead free solder so bought a pound of it. Used very little, mostly learnig how to work with the SMD. Found out that regular 60/40 or the better 63/37 was compatiable with it or the lead free could be removed from the circuit boards, so stuck that lead free crap way back in the shelf.

Seems that anytime something has been around for a long time and works well the 'greenies' want to do away with it.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I know of a ~50 kilowatt three-phase 480 Vac in to +/- 150 Vdc out power supply that had bus bars plated with pure tin.

Tin whiskers soon shorted the bus bars together while at full power, triggering full-power arcs. Damaged heavily or destroyed. (Nobody was hurt.)

Power supply vendor got to make a new one, on their nickel. Don't know how much could be reused. Educational.

It takes only 5% lead in a tin coating to prevent tin whiskers.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joe Gwinn

Does anyone know what this guy is babbling about?

Reply to
Rick C

Savbit has 1.5% copper, so it can't be 60/40. The copper 'saves ' copper or brass from being dissolved into the solder. It as popular when a lot of shops used copper tipped Weller or similar soldering guns to greatly extend tip life. It was n the market in the '60s when I first worked in a repair shop, and 0.093" solder was common as dirt. The Ersin/Multicore was more expensive, and a lot of fly by night types used cheap 50/50 solder that spit and sputtered flux and solder because both were low quality.

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Reply to
Michael Terrell

Yes, I heard even 2%. That seems like it would be a reasonable compromise, where tin plating is necessary. Stupid thing is, brass for water taps that people drink out of is allowed to have more than 2% lead in it, as are free-machining steel, brass and aluminium alloys, even for electronics assemblies IIRC. I think it should at least be a uniform requirement, but I guess someone in the free-machining-alloys business has better lobbyists than the electronics industry does.

I have old relays (1940s) and germanium transistors with terrible whiskers all over them. Obviously well before RoHS.

Reply to
Chris Jones

Yes really, I had to start using it for work, I got used to it, and now I don't mind it.

The main exception that I found so far is large 6-layer boards with through-hole parts where they didn't use thermal relief between the pads and internal ground planes - I can't get those hot enough for normal lead-free solders to melt and had to use some multicore LMP alloy with lead in it - I have plenty of that. I would probably also reach for some non-RoHS Savbit type solder if soldering very fine wires (50 SWG magnet wire etc.), where the wire is liable to dissolve.

The other thing I slightly dislike about lead-free solders is that the tip of the iron seems to have more tendency to oxidise (when not in use) than with 60/40, but mostly that isn't a problem if I switch off the iron when I'm not using it. That's ok with my Metcal because it heats up quickly so I don't have to wait for it. (It does annoy me at work though, when other people leave the iron on overnight after wiping all of the protective solder off the tip and it is totally oxidised the next day.)

For general use, I am quite happy with lead-free. I'll keep some 60/40 as well, but for general use I don't need or want to use it.

Ok, <0.1% lead content in the solder.

The criterion they use for RoHS is <0.1% lead in the solder.

Yes, good stuff is expensive, probably more than the silver content can jusify. I use Multicore 96SC with 5 cores of flux, either crystal 400 or you can get 362 rosin if you prefer.

(The first roll of lead-free that I bought, in the 1990s, seemed awful to me and I hated it. It was just copper and tin with no silver in it, and my iron was probably not hot enough for it also. I recently tried that roll again with my Metcal and it seemed just about ok now but certainly not my favourite.)

Savbit has copper in it, and I never liked that - goes mushy when a little bit more copper from the wire gets into it. If the iron tip has no cracks in the iron plating, and I'm not soldering fine wires, I would much prefer 60/40 or LMP, (or 96SC RoHS) over savbit.

Reply to
Chris Jones

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