God, how I hate the rotten stuff. I've now been caught twice in two weeks with Sony KSS xxx series lasers. For those who don't know, these lasers (in common with lots of other makes) are shipped with the laser diode shorted by a blob of solder across two closely spaced pads on the little pcb that carries the connector and power pot. You remove this blob once the device is installed, by just touching your iron tip against it. The solder has always in the past, just 'flowed' onto the iron tip by surface tension, I guess. However, all that has changed with lead-free. Because the bloody stuff 'strings', you have to be REALLY careful that a barely visible whisker hasn't been left across the pads.
If this happens, you're left with a laser that doesn't burn, and hence won't read discs. The first one last week, was in a Pioneer, and was reasonably easy to get at, but this morning's one wasted a whole bunch more time, because the laser was in the depths of a mechanism in a 300 disc 'jukebox' type player. You can't test without mostly reassembling the mech.
So now, rather than relying on a removal method that just worked, and on most units could be carried out with the laser in situ and connected, it is necessary to remove the solder blob with the laser right out so that you can hold it up to a light to make sure that the gap is completely clear. Which rather defeats the purpose of having the laser shorted in the first place ...
So I suppose the lesson is solder a loose wire link across and remove their blob , all in good lighting/viewing. Assemble and cut or desolder your wire fudge bridge after placement.
I was given a small battery powered soldering iron a few years ago as a gift. It came with a small coil of solder. In the beginning I'd take it on small jobs with me and I noticed that I could never do a good soldering job with the thing. Now I've been soldering for over 50 years so I figured it couldn't have been me. The solder wouldn't flow, it would blob etc. Finally one morning while on the throne having nothing better to read, I read trough the instructions for the miserable thing. It seems like the manufacturer had seen fit to package these things with lead free solder. As soon as I got rid of the worthless stuff the iron was fine. Thankfully we don't have to deal with that bullshit here in the US yet but it is getting difficult to find 60/40 in surplus. I'm certain that one day some misinformed idiot over here is going to picture a baby chewing on a PC board and get a whole shitload of money and influence together and lobby Congress to enact similar laws as the EU has. Then we'll be shaving the whiskers off our boards too. Lenny
I was given a small battery powered soldering iron a few years ago as a gift. It came with a small coil of solder. In the beginning I'd take it on small jobs with me and I noticed that I could never do a good soldering job with the thing. Now I've been soldering for over 50 years so I figured it couldn't have been me. The solder wouldn't flow, it would blob etc. Finally one morning while on the throne having nothing better to read, I read trough the instructions for the miserable thing. It seems like the manufacturer had seen fit to package these things with lead free solder. As soon as I got rid of the worthless stuff the iron was fine. Thankfully we don't have to deal with that bullshit here in the US yet but it is getting difficult to find 60/40 in surplus. I'm certain that one day some misinformed idiot over here is going to picture a baby chewing on a PC board and get a whole shitload of money and influence together and lobby Congress to enact similar laws as the EU has. Then we'll be shaving the whiskers off our boards too. Lenny
+++++
So how many genuine American manufactures are there ? That is use leaded-solder tinned components as well as leaded solder for assembly? There is only one production line type used in China , Taiwan etc these days , they had to go with Europe , the biggest market, 6 years ago and is now all PbF (outside of derogated industry enduse ). I suspect any genuine USA manufacturing, outside of the derogated aerospace/medical/defense/nuclear industries, using proper solder, is in the range 0 to 5 percent
Just because "American" equipment is not marked with PbF or RoHS etc , does not mean there is not PbF inside. Do some basic physical tests on the solder , along with researching the UL E-number on the boards will likely show its from the orient .
So I suppose the lesson is solder a loose wire link across and remove their blob , all in good lighting/viewing. Assemble and cut or desolder your wire fudge bridge after placement.
***Pretty much what I was thinking - maybe a loop of that thin Kynar "kludge" wire that you can wiggle off once the laser is safely in. Maybe a strip of thick black anti-static bag & a paper clip on the end of the flexiprint between the blob coming off & the link going on.
I saw one once! It was a transistor radio kit - a bit before the days of personal computers - which had been put together with Solderlene* - sold as liquid cold solder!
Basically, polystyrene cement with silver colouring added ...!
*It's still around!
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I don't think the tubes said anything about being non conductive in those days, though!
I wonder just how much of a problem lead bearing solder used in electronic devices is compared to the lead that used to be in paint and gasoline? In the July 28th issue of Science News there is an article about California Condors ingesting lead from animals killed by being shot with lead bullets or shot. According to the article the condors are being poisoned by the lead and it has such a deleterious effect on the condors that without human care the condors would die out. Their population is not self sustaining without human intervention because of the lead. And there is plenty of evidence that lead in gasoline and lead bearing paint has caused neurogical damage, among other health problems, in children. Banning leaded gasoline and lead bearing paint has shown a marked decrease in neurological deficits in children typically exposed to lead in the past. Even so, how much of a problem is lead in electronic devices? Would we be better off with some type of legislation that requires electronic devices to be accepted by retailers for recycling? Maybe by putting a deposit on electronic devices that is refunded when the device is replaced? Eric
It hinges on what you mean by "recycling" Fashions and technology-advance mean zero recycling of components. Substantial single-type metalwork is separated and recycled , the rest is sent exceedingly cheaply in otherwise empty conntainers to Asia where it is burnt and residual metal extracted from the cremulators.
Gizard anatomy birds like swans , have much improved health since the banning of lead fishing weights in the UK. Birds shot with lead or lead-substitute are still dead , so no health improvement there.
Removal of lead from gasoline and paint, were valid exercises, as the lead from the gasoline fumes was easily ingested, and the lead from paint could find its way into the environment in an ingestible form, reasonably easily. However, solder appears to have gotten itself hitched to these campaigns, merely by association. It was, as far as I can tell, another example of hysteria that surrounds the eco-bollox movement, and any perceived detrimental effects of lead being in solder, have been hugely exaggerated, and are largely without foundation.
Tin and lead is a stable compound, and the lead does not wash out of it in water. Pure lead is not soluble in water. There was talk of it being a huge problem with electronic items in landfill, having the lead 'leeched out' of the solder by ground water, but there seems to be little evidence that this ever did, or could occur, without the rain being extremely acidic, and that situation hasn't existed for years since industrial airborne pollutants were legislated against in most of the civilised world.
For some years now, EU countries have had the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive in place, and this ensures that all electronic equipment is 'recycled' in some form. As Nigel says in his posted reply, this does not actually ensure that much in the way of 'true' recycling is done, but as all of the equipment now *has* to find its way back into the system, paid for by the manufacturer as a levy on his sales, then it *could* be. It would not be that hard to re-extract the lead, if possibly a little more costly.
Everyone at the sharp end knows, in truth, that lead-free solder is pretty useless stuff. Like eco-bollox lightbulbs, it's not a replacement technology, it's a substitute one. It has caused both the electronic manufacturing and repair industries huge problems in the requirement to change equipment and processes, and in increased energy useage, And for what ? To address a 'problem' that wasn't there in the first place. Aside from the manufacturing and service problems it has caused, I would contend that it has almost certainly resulted in a far larger quantity of consumer electronic equipment being life-ended earlier than would have previously been the case, due to bad joint-related failures that are not worth getting repaired, because it's cheaper to just buy a replacement piece of Chinese junk from the nearest shed or supermarket. This has the knock-on effect of being hugely wasteful of resources and energy, which is a far greater overall problem to the well-being of fauna on this planet, than lead in solder ever was ...
You might want to consider why in any areas where equipment is likely to be used to preserve human life - e.g. avionics, medical, military - such equipment is exempt from the lead-free solder manufacturing requirement, that non-critical equipment has to abide by.
I don't remember off hand the figures for petrochem industry for annual lead procurement, but it was truly staggering!!!
Many thousands of tons of lead converted to tetra-ethyl-lead and added to petrol and ultimately dispersed into the atmosphere as particulates.
Lead-solder is a relatively stable alloy (except at extremes of temperature) that is ultimately safer than the raw lead & its ores/oxides mined out of the ground in the first place.
The brussels suits truly are the ultimate in dumbass fuckwits!!!
Back about 20 years ago, I was a regular reader of Forbes, Fortune, Business Week. There was a battle going on, at least in their pages, between recycling and the garbage incinerators. (Incinerators are a much bigger thing in Europe and Japan than in the US).
The companies that built the garbage burners, and the companies that use these burners to generate electric power are some of the main movers for "getting the lead out". Before the days of recycling industry and its high tech garbage sorting, that was seen as the cheaper way to reduce their air pollution problem. And they had the money to lobby (or buy off) the bureaucrats.
So after a couple of decades, it's been institutionalized in the EU bureaucracy, and picked up by the greens, too. So it will probably live on, even if a better recycling scheme would make lead free electronics unnecessary.
Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)
Not in pure water, maybe, but organic acids (acetic acid) attack lead and you can't have decomposition of organics in contact with lead in a landfill, without some leaching.
Which goes nowhere at all. Landfills are lined with very thick clay layers, and even if they weren't, heavy metals don't go anywhere in ground water at earth-surface normal temperatures. See the Oklo natural reactor in Gabon. It was sitting right there in an aquifer, and operated on and off for half a million years. The fission products went something like 1 mile in well over 1 billion years.
The ROHS rationale was to protect the health of folks doing recycling. To save some gloves and respirators, they created a monster. Typical Eurocrat BS.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
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hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
I have never seen conclusive evidence one way or another. From my perspective, the real issue is the huge piles of electronic trash generated every year. If these were properly recycled and/or disposed of, there probably wouldn't be an issue with lead.
Europe has the WEEE directive to deal with waste electronics equipment - but the recycling facilities are being overstretched due to the increased volume of scrap caused by low life expectancy lead free solder.
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