Today's Lead Free Crap Solder Stories ...

But actually Smitty, it amounts to the same thing, doesn't it ? The cost of consumer electronic equipment is so low, as has been dictated by the market, that some shitty practices have to prevail to meet those price points. The thing is that with leaded solder, those shitty practices that were solder-related, could be got away with. With lead-free, they can't, so we are now seeing equipment which manages to conform to the price constraints, but can't make it any more, in the reliability stakes.

As to the current formulations being better than earlier ones, I'm not sure that there is actually any difference. Mixes with additional metals to try to improve the 'workability' of the stuff have been there right from the start. It's just that they were too expensive to be practical. I guess for manufacturing quantities, this is no longer the case, and this has undoubtedly led to an improvement in joint integrity. For sure, lead-free joints now at least look a bit better than they did, but I am still seeing many more bad joints on in-warranty, or just out of warranty items, than I ever did when leaded solder prevailed.

No matter how it's dressed up, the stuff just isn't as good for the job *all round* as leaded solder was. It has replaced a mature and reliable technology that had evolved into a process as near perfect as it could be, with one that at best is a 'next best thing' compromise, and to what benefit ? None that actually stands up to scrutiny in the real world. It was a politically green agenda fuelled by the hysterical rubbish that gets spouted about both the real and imagined dangers of lead in the environment, that lead to the situation that we now have.

Arfa

I'm not in a position to disagree with you on that score. Safety and reliability are founded on the principle of "more than one fault" being needed to create failure, and you may well be right that lead was more forgiving of shoddy manufacturing processes.

Fortunately, with the exception of some high-end audio, my company doesn't make any consumer products. Our industrial customers expect quality first, timely delivery second, and price third. They may squeak about cost from time to time, but it's never a driving force.

Considering the price of many consumer electronic gadgets, I find it astonishing that manufacturers can afford to put it in a box and ship it from China, let alone manufacture it.

There is no doubt lead should not be used where it can wind up being consumed by humans or animals.. It's use in gasoline, paint, dyes, ceramic glazes, cast toys, trinkets, etc is indefensible. On the other hand, banning it's use in ICs, and circuit boards is asinine.

PlainBill

On 5/22/2010 12:23 PM snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com spake thus:

Is it really? Think about it: where does the majority of all that crap end up?

Hint: it sure as hell ain't in approved, safely managed reclamation or recycling facilities. You know what I'm talking about. So it's the same with lead-containing consumer electronics as it is with those other things you mentioned (well, not the same as gasoline, but everything else there eventually ends up in landfills, waterways, etc.).

AIUI, 99.9% of the lead in consumer electronics was in CRTs. Isn't there something like a couple of pounds of the stuff in there? Now that we've switched to LCDs, that problem has gone away. The amount of lead in a circuit board is practically negligible.

Smitty Two wrote in news:prestwhich- snipped-for-privacy@newsfarm.iad.highwinds-media.com:

Yes,and how much actually leaches out from PCBs? I suspect lead tire-balance weights contribute far more lead to the environment.(they -have- switched to no-lead alloys) I find them all the time when I'm out on my bicycle. I pick them up and melt them into ingots.

On 5/22/2010 4:22 PM Jim Yanik spake thus:

Lots. Enough to do real damage. Hence the regulations.

Hey, I do that too! It's almost a reflex with me. Someday someone's gonna see me stuffing a big ol' wheel weight into my pocket and go "WTF?????".

I've actually taken a lot of lead out of the environment this way. Pounds and pounds of it.

On 5/22/2010 3:42 PM Smitty Two spake thus:

You could have said the same thing about leaded gasoline way back when. The amount of lead in a tankful of tetraethyl lead gasoline is practically negligible. But you know what? it all adds up. That's why it was banned.

Yes, I would absolutely agree with those sentiments.

Arfa

Even if it does end up in landfill, how does the lead get back out of the components and solder, into the environment. Hint, it doesn't ...

Arfa

On 5/22/2010 5:42 PM Arfa Daily spake thus:

How the hell can you say that with such cocksure certainty?

Look; we *know* that all kinds of things can leach out of landfills. There's all kinds of shit in there besides PC boards, enough compounds to make a chemical brew capable of leaching lead (and other metals) into the surrounding area.

Yeah, sure: "they"--you know, the little elves that watch over us all--say they make sure to seal the landfill, cap it with impervious material, keep anything from leaching out. Do you believe them? I sure don't.

I think this is just an irresponsible attitude on your part and on others here. I *totally* agree with your other complaints about lead-free solder: it's clearly a pain in the ass. But to listen to you and others here go on about it, you'd think these rules were simply capricious actions of some pinheaded Eurocrats who don't know what the hell they're talking about. I think you're wrong about that.

And I don't want to live in an environment full of lead, thank you very much.

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But does the lead in the glass of crt's leach out, I don't think so.

On 5/22/2010 7:44 PM hr(bob) snipped-for-privacy@att.net spake thus:

In my 'hood, most of the TVs and monitors that get put out on the street end up broken. CRT smashed to pieces. The city eventually comes along and picks them up and takes them to the dump. It's a lot easier for lead to leach out of broken pieces of glass.

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The EPA had to grind them to a fine dust, then use a strong acid to remove some lead. Then they claimed that CRTs had 27 pounds of lead.

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Wow, that must've been a huge CRT... Or the rest of the CRT must've been made of negative-weight materials...

As of "And I don't want to live in an environment full of lead, thank you very much." -- where do you think that lead came from in the first place? Did somebody bring it from the Moon?

As far as I am aware, there was no proof offered that lead had been leaching out of electronic solder in land-fill when the politicians came to legislate on banning lead from solder. In the U.K. there were no scientists or engineers on the committee that took that decision; and the "self-evident fact" that lead was causing a problem was accepted without question. I have yet to hear of any meaningful research which backs up that decision.

There is little doubt, from the evidence coming in from all across the electronics industry, that lead-free solder is decreasing the reliability of equipment and increasing the cost of manufacture and the amount of waste (containing other, more soluble, toxic materials) going into landfill. The overall environmental effect of the anti-lead legislation is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.

Banning automated assembly of consumer electronics would be a much more environmentally-friendly move as it would reduce production, increase the price and ecourage consumers to hang on to their existing kit. It might also encourage the manufacturers to make things in a way which could be repaired. Anyone want to campaign for that?

There is plenty of "cocksure certainty" on both sides of the argument. That wouldn't matter if it was just an argument, but unfounded prejudice should not be allowed to dictate legislation.

asinine.

The anti-lead argument is that too much electronic equipment is dumped in landfills, where acidic rainwater slowly dissolves the lead and it winds up in the water supply. This is plausible, but I've yet to see any proof.

My argument has long been that the only dangerous substances are those that actually get into the environment.

Not when you have tens of thousands of circuit boards rotting in a landfill.

Actually, I would say that pretty much sums up *exactly* what we have here. The conventional wisdom that is thrust upon the public in regard of the dangers of lead solder and lead glass in landfill, is that it gets washed out by rain water into the water table below. Lead in metallic form is not soluble in water, and the tin / lead compound of solder, is chemically very stable, and no more susceptible to breakdown by water. Lead does not leach out of glass at all, unless it is pulverised into an extremely fine powder.

For decades, water was supplied to houses via lead pipes. If the lead dissolved that easily, they would have needed continuous replacement. Rainwater sealing on roofs is traditionally done with lead sheeting. This is subject to continuous bombardment by the rain, including water containing mixes of often quite noxious airborne pollutants. Many buildings hundreds of years old, still have their original lead roof.

I don't doubt that if you try hard enough, you can show lead being gotten out of solder into the environment. I too have no desire to live in an environment full of lead, and initiatives like removing it from petrol, and paints, where it could - and did - readily get into the atmosphere, were very much the right ones, but unfortunately, the word "lead" became rapidly synonomous with "bad" and "pollutant" such that a religious hysteria became attached to the banning of any and all items containing it. Banning it's use in solder and electronic equipment was a needless over-reaction that has caused endless knock-on effects that were never considered by the zealots who made the proposals. Not the least of these is the increased energy budget to work with the stuff (you need more heat).

Aside from this, there is no reason at all, given the WEEE directive that was introduced, that effectively prevents electronic items going to landfill, that electronic equipment should not be properly recycled, and the solder, and hence its lead content, recovered. The banning of leaded solder and its replacement with lead-free, was a solution to a problem that did not actually exist in the first place, and even if it did, had a rather better solution already in hand, with the impending introduction of the WEEE directive ...

If you research the use of lead a bit more, you will find that over 80% of the world's production goes to the manufacture of automotive batteries. There was no technology sufficiently developed to replace this robust workhorse, which forced some proper thinking about how to deal with them at their end of life. Now, just about 100% of car batteries are recycled, and their lead recovered.

Arfa