Lead-Free RoHS?

[Dave Baumann]

3) Increased inventory for the lead-free transition (RoHS), which has resulted in OEMs requiring duplicate designs for both lead and lead-free platforms (this accounted for less than half of the inventory increase).

Can anyone put some colour on what the significance on this lead-free RoHS is? Its not the first time I've heard it referenced. Has there been some legislation somewhere to use lead free board designs or something?

 

[N00b]

3) Increased inventory for the lead-free transition (RoHS), which has resulted in OEMs requiring duplicate designs for both lead and lead-free platforms (this accounted for less than half of the inventory increase).

Can anyone put some colour on what the significance on this lead-free RoHS is? Its not the first time I've heard it referenced. Has there been some legislation somewhere to use lead free board designs or something?

http://www.pb-free.info/
Another one from a german website
Basically you may not sell any new electric or electronic devices containing lead, mercury and a few other materials starting from July, 1st 2006 in the european union and california.

 

[hoom]

Lead = Pb or Lead = time from order to delivery?

 

[N00b]

Lead = Pb or Lead = time from order to delivery?

Lead = Pb

 

[Diplo]

Can anyone put some colour on what the significance on this lead-free RoHS is?

It means you can safely suck your video card without fear of brain damage. Of course, if you're the kind of person who likes to suck video cards then the chances are you probably already are damaged

 

[_xxx_]

Basically you may not sell any new electric or electronic devices containing lead, mercury and a few other materials starting from July, 1st 2006 in the european union and california.

Yes. We had to join the transition as well.

In this case it is mostly about solder being lead-free, the components/board already are inherently.

 

[Charmaka]

Can anyone put some colour on what the significance on this lead-free RoHS is?

It means you can safely suck your video card without fear of brain damage. Of course, if you're the kind of person who likes to suck video cards then the chances are you probably already are damaged

Obviously the real reason is to do with minerals leeching out at land-fills and contaminating nearby land and waterways, but you knew that already.

 

[Basic]

Charmaka told the reason for it.

I'll give some problems.

Leaded and lead-free solder has different melting temperatures, and the good soldering temperature range does not overlap. So you can't mix leaded and lead-free components on the same circuit board.

It's easy to inspect leaded solder points to see if it's well done. But lead-free solder points look bad even when they are well done.

The solder temperature range for lead-free solder are higher and narrower, so you need better control on temperature, and components that can handle higher temperatures.

With lead-free solder, you can get "whiskers", which is some surface-tension-freaking-out thing. It's thin threads of solder growing straight out from the solder points. It's of course no fun when such a whisker reach another solder point.


I think east asian companies has most of it sorted out, but around here we're some years behind.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Thanks guys.

So, as is the norm for safety measure legistlations the upshot is that board costs will increase (at least, until everyone get sufficiently goo with lead fre solder), however are there any potential benefits to using lead free materials?

 

[RussSchultz]

Thanks guys.

So, as is the norm for safety measure legistlations the upshot is that board costs will increase (at least, until everyone get sufficiently goo with lead fre solder), however are there any potential benefits to using lead free materials?

Not poisoning the world?

 

[nelg]

IIRC one of the reasons (not the only!) Taiwan was able grow into such a large producer of PCBs was its poor regulations WRT industrial waste. In the west it was another case of NIMBY whereby manufactures were regulated and had to incur a cost which did not have to be incurred by Taiwan manufacturers. In the end , thinking globally, the regulations backfired.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Thanks guys.

So, as is the norm for safety measure legistlations the upshot is that board costs will increase (at least, until everyone get sufficiently goo with lead fre solder), however are there any potential benefits to using lead free materials?

Not poisoning the world?

He meant technically, who cares about the ecosystem you bloody tree-hugging hippy.

 

[Rys]

Thanks guys.

So, as is the norm for safety measure legistlations the upshot is that board costs will increase (at least, until everyone get sufficiently goo with lead fre solder), however are there any potential benefits to using lead free materials?

Take a look at what the power supply company FSP has had to do in response to the new rulings. It might not apply in the graphics space, but they've upped spending on R&D and come out with cheaper (less components, smaller PCBs etc), smaller, less complex PSU designs, due to clever thinking about how to make them within the confines of the new legislation.

If it makes board vendors think outside of the box in the same way (digital VRMs for one example), it can only be a good thing, leading to lots of potential benefits.

Use of lead free materials doesn't mean you just use your old designs, IMO.

 

[mashie]

It isn't only the solder that contain Pb, a fair number of ICs do as well so the transition could be fairly painful for some companies that will have to change manufacturing process to comply. How much this will impact the videocard industy I don't know.

 

[Pete]

however are there any potential benefits to using lead free materials?

Not poisoning the world?

 

[Charmaka]

I was going to say "it means you can actually sell your product in the EU", but that doesn't seem to be a major factor for a lot of companies these days...