Dr. Laura Turbini reported the announced  plans of some Japanese
manufacturers to remove lead from their products. What has not been made
clear in any of the plans I have seen is the extent of lead removal.
Ignoring the issue of lead as a trace contaminant (i.e., not intentionally
added), there are three stages:
1.   Use of a lead-free solder
2.   Use of a lead-free finish on board lands and all component terminations
3.   Use of only lead-free components (for example,
*       no lead-containing component material such as PLZT
*       no lead-containing seal glass
*       no lead-containing fastener alloy)

I recall that Mr. Tom Baggio, a subscriber to this forum, announced in his
presentation at the March APEX his company's schedule for all three stages.
I don't know whether that schedule has ever been published, but maybe he
would be willing to comment. It would be interesting to see the three-stage
schedule for any company that has announced their plans to go lead-free.

I have not seen any announced plans for a company to produce products that
are free of any of the other materials identified in the European Union's
draft WEEE directive as environmentally unfriendly - in particular
halogenated flame retardants, hexavalent chromium, and cadmium. At least
with draft 4 the deadline for removal has been moved out to 2008.

That draft, incidentally, pretty much exempts lead in stages 2 and 3, so it
will be interesting to see if that has any impact on the Japanese lead-free
plans. Until a company gets past stage 1, I'd like to suggest that for
clarity it replace the claim "lead-free" with "made with lead-free solder."

Gordon Davy

################################################################
Leadfree E-Mail Forum provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c
################################################################
To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask]
with following text in the body:
To subscribe:   SUBSCRIBE Leadfree <your full name>
To unsubscribe:   SIGNOFF Leadfree
###############################################################
Please visit IPC's Center for Lead-Free Electronics Assembly
(http://www.leadfree.org ) for additional information.
For technical support contact Keach Sasamori [log in to unmask] or 847-790-5315.
################################################################