EU lead-free directive

z180@nospam24.com (Peter) writes:

>  John Devereux <jdREMOVE@THISdevereux.me.uk> wrote:
> 
> >> That is very strange - what about industrial electronics; that has to
> >> last much longer than the average piece of IT gear.
> >
> >As I understand it, Industrial electronics appears to be exempt from
> >the RoHS directive, at present. (But not from the WEEE one).
> 
> Hmmm. Interesting! Is there a reference to this somewhere? Currently,
> every customer is sending us a list of questions about this. Would
> "industrial" be anything "professional" e.g. professional broadcast
> equipment?

Hi Peter,

Checkout the "Re: A european question : RoHS" thread (in S.E.D). Links
to the directives are:

<http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2003/l_037/l_03720030213en00190023.pdf>

and

<http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2003/l_037/l_03720030213en00240038.pdf>

See Article 2 section 1 of RoHS, which refers to Annex IA of the WEEE
document.


> What is WEEE?

I am *so* not an expert on this.... But as I understand it, WEEE is
about making sure manufacturers bear the cost of recycling products
made with "hazardous" substances. For example, by providing recyling
schemes, collecting the unwanted items etc.

RoHS on the other hand *prohibits* such manufacture in the first
place, with some exceptions. It appears that industrial equipment is
one such!

-- 

John Devereux

Peter schrieb:

> What is WEEE?

"Waste of Eletrical and Electronic Equipment" - another new EU directive.

Basically, it is about that manufacturers of EE products must guarantie to take
them back without cost. They also must be marked as devices that shall not be
dropped into "normal" waste.
This one applies to the companies that first sell anything to the (normally
private) end customer, B2B is less concerned (if at all).

There surely are online documents about it, but I don't have links at hand...

-- 
Dipl.-Ing. Tilmann Reh
http://www.autometer.de - Elektronik nach Ma�.

On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 08:48:43 +0100, Paul Burke <paul@scazon.com>
wrote:

>Bryan Hackney wrote:
>
>> a) Lead batteries should be highly regulated
>> 
>
>Yes, a deposit on them, say $400. You pay it once, and redeem it by 
>handing in the old battery. Like we used to do with bottles in the 60s.

FWIW, here in Michigan, there is a core charge for lead-acid car
batteries, though I believe it's much less than $400. I'm not sure of
the exact amount, because the core cancels when you replace a battery
(here's my old one, give me a new one).

[...]

>Shouldn't be too difficult to extract the lead from PCBs, if the 
>political will is there (roast them at 300 degrees in a centrifuge?) We 
>need to encourage recovery and re-use over dumping anyway.

PCB metals recycling has been around a long time.  Usually, though,
they're after stuff more valuable than lead.

Regards,

                               -=Dave
-- 
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

"Peter" <z180@nospam24.com> skrev i meddelandet 
news:unfo91l75645teuplpd7omgonj2nndst2m@4ax.com...
> Hi,
>
> This comes in mid-2006 and AIUI requires that lead content is below
> 0.1%.
>
> Surely, one could achieve this by making the overall product heavier?
>
...

>
> Any views?
>

Don't add a lead bar to the product.

-- 
Best Regards,
Ulf Samuelsson
This is intended to be my personal opinion which may,
or may bot be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB 

Luhan Monat wrote:

> Joerg wrote:
> 
>> Hello Luhan,
>>
>>> IEEE code of ethics?  I'll just have to look that one up. ...
>>
>>
>>
>> It's here:
>>
>> http://www.ieee.org/portal/site/mainsite/menuitem.818c0c39e85ef176fb2275875bac26c8/index.jsp?&pName=corp_level1&path=about/whatis&file=code.xml&xsl=generic.xsl 
>>
>>
>>>                                               ... Basically, if  a 
>>> client wanted a 'marital aid' with 'midi in', I would just quote them 
>>> the cost to make a 'working prototype'.
>>
>>
>>
>> ROFL!
>>
>> Regards, Joerg
>>
>> http://www.analogconsultants.com
> 
> 
> Thanks, I have never seen that.  Looks like how I work anyway.  Except 
> the 'bribery' part.  We needed the use of a TV studio once, but the 
> engineer didn't work weekends.  So we scheduled 4 hours studio time on 
> Saturday, paid for the studio time, and slipped 2 nice crisp $100 bills 
> to the engineer.  He says 'any time guys'.
> 
> Sometimes the wheels of capitalism work better with a bit of lubrication.

That wasn't a bribe, just some casual compensation.
You didn't pay him to do anything unlawful.  Of course
I'm not a lawyer and that's not legal advise (:

GMM50 wrote:
> Oh so management will take the blame.... I don't think so.

Actually no. Engineering's job is to specify the right part.
Purchasing's job is to buy the right part. The vendor's job is to
supply the right part.

If Engineering has a RoHS compliance cert for part ABC Engineering is
OK.

If Purchasing requires the vendor to provide a RoHS compliance cert for
inbound shipments of part ABC, Purchasing is OK.

If the vendor ships part ABC, and part ABC is compliant, the vendor is
OK.

As long as you spec in a part and require it to be RoHS-compliant, any
problems that happen with the RoHS side of things are a fight between
Purchasing and the vendor.

Luhan Monat wrote:

> Thanks, I have never seen that.  Looks like how I work anyway.  Except
> the 'bribery' part.  We needed the use of a TV studio once, but the
> engineer didn't work weekends.  So we scheduled 4 hours studio time on
> Saturday, paid for the studio time, and slipped 2 nice crisp $100 bills
> to the engineer.  He says 'any time guys'.
>
> Sometimes the wheels of capitalism work better with a bit of lubrication.

In India you can pay 'rush money' to get the wheels of bureaucracy to speed up a little. It's apparently considered perfectly acceptable. Oh - never mind the
business with customs at Bombay airport !

Graham

On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 20:56:36 +0100, the renowned Pooh Bear
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>Luhan Monat wrote:
>
>> Thanks, I have never seen that.  Looks like how I work anyway.  Except
>> the 'bribery' part.  We needed the use of a TV studio once, but the
>> engineer didn't work weekends.  So we scheduled 4 hours studio time on
>> Saturday, paid for the studio time, and slipped 2 nice crisp $100 bills
>> to the engineer.  He says 'any time guys'.
>>
>> Sometimes the wheels of capitalism work better with a bit of lubrication.
>
>In India you can pay 'rush money' to get the wheels of bureaucracy to speed up a little. It's apparently considered perfectly acceptable. Oh - never mind the
>business with customs at Bombay airport !
>
>Graham

Yup, one of the irritating things for people who move from such places
to more "civilized" countries is that you often *can't* speed things
up by paying what is usually a pittance more. The civil servants are
unionized, relatively well paid and generally incorruptable. 


Best regards, 
Spehro Pefhany
-- 
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Paul Burke wrote:

> Shouldn't be too difficult to extract the lead from PCBs, if the
> political will is there (roast them at 300 degrees in a centrifuge?)

That probably produces dioxins !

I've seen stuff about 'recycling' pcbs and I can't believe there's any
sense in it.

Graham

John Popelish wrote:

> Tilmann Reh wrote:
>
> > Each material must be RoHS conform, for example contain less than 0.1% lead
> > (similar tresholds exist for the other "evil" substances).
> >
> > As an example, often an IC is used: it consists of
> > a) the die itself
> > b) the leadframe
> > c) the expoxy encasing
> > d) the surface finish of the leads.
> >
> > *Each* of these materials must conform to the RoHS directive.
> >
> > Another example is a simple cable, where the metal wire is defined as a single
> > material and the plastic insulation as another material, and both must conform
> > to the RoHS limits.
> >
> > For assembled boards, this extents to the PCB base material, its surface finish
> > (HAL) where it persists after soldering, the solder, and all parts (for those
> > see above).
>
> What do you make of:
>
> http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2003/l_037/l_03720030213en00190023.pdf
>
> "Applications of lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium, which
> are exempted from the requirements of Article 4(1)...
> 7. � Lead in high melting temperature type solders (i.e. tin-lead
> solder alloys containing more than 85 % lead)"
>
> Why would they make an exception for solder that has over double the
> lead of that most commonly used for electronics?  Does this mean that
> if producers of electronics can find a way to use 85% lead solder,
> they are exempt?

I suspect, since I was looking at some RoHS stuff today, that's intended to allow
high lead solders for die attach in semiconductors.

I rather though that was *low* melting point though !

Check this out.

http://uk.farnell.com/images/en/ede/pdf/PKG153.pdf


Graham