Camille,
Thank you very much for the response. I truly apologize for the
"vagueness" of my question. Sometimes you know what you want to ask but
aren't sure how to put it into words. Many of our instruments end up in
the Asian market, specifically Japan, which is what prompted my
question. While I think we have a fingernails grip on RoHS compliance
the subject is also being bantered around within our company the subject
of Halogen-free.
I will definitely take the advice of yourself and Chris and research
information about suppliers of the mask used by our board houses.
Best regards
Doug
-----Original Message-----
From: Leadfree [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Camille Good
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 3:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [LF] Soldermask for PC Boards
Doug,
As was pointed out by Chris James, it would really be best to ask your
suppliers. However, I'll pass on some information I've learned over the
past couple of years:
1) Halogen-free vs. RoHS-compliant --- RoHS, which was written for the
European market, does not ban all halogens, just certain classes of
them. True halogen-free requirements seem to be more prevalent in Asia.
I don't know how that will affect soldermask, but the distinction can be
important for the PCB laminates because one of the common
fire-retardants, TBBPA, IS allowed under RoHS, but IS NOT allowed in
halogen-free construction. So it is possible the distinction may be
important for soldermask as well.
2) I sent out some queries on this discussion group in January 2005
about the difference between RoHS-compliant, lead-free, and
halogen-free. The answers I got from the group were very helpful and
very educational. If you do a search in the list archives, you should be
able to find the old posts.
I was unable to tell from your original post whether you were
worried about the RoHS requirements in Europe, or the halogen-free
requirements in Asia, or both.
I'll admit that when I first started reading about the RoHS and
other "green" technology issues a couple of years ago, I would sometimes
call something "halogen-free" rather than type out "does not contain the
PBBs or PBDE's, specifically penta-BDE and octa-BDE [because deca-BDE is
still okay, so even saying all poly-BDEs isn't technically correct] that
are banned by RoHS". The discussion early last year showed me that when
I was asking "halogens", I was using a far more generic term than I
realized.
3) I had a local PCB supplier tell me one time that cadmium pigments
used to be used decades ago for yellow & red silkscreening on PCBs, and
while that formulation hadn't been used in the U.S. in quite some time,
it was possible off-shore PCB suppliers might still be using it. The
person telling me this also said he didn't personally know of any actual
cases where this had happened, but I still keep the possibility in mind
as a reminder that I shouldn't make assumptions about what I do or don't
need to check.
4) IPC does also run a halogen-free discussion list, but it is a very
very quiet list.
5) PCB industry & suppliers --- Unfortunately, there don't seem to be
many PCB houses that maintain a strong presence in this discussion
group. There have been posts before about PCB construction, but I can't
remember if there were any definitive discussions about soldermask. I've
seen more than one post saying most of the PCB houses buy the PCB
consituent parts pre-made, they are not making the fiberglass laminates,
pigments, soldermask, etc. themselves. That, combined with the fact
that many PCB houses don't have an in-house chemist or chemical engineer
who is an expert on the chemical composition of materials used in their
PCBs, means that some PCB buyers have had to ask their PCB suppliers
more than once for information about chemical content of the PCBs they
are buying. The PCB house's first answer was sometimes a verbal "sure,
we comply", and then once the customer asked for something in writing,
the PCB house would come back with an answer of "it may be a couple !
weeks
before we can have a written certificate for you, we've never asked our
suppliers about this before so we're stil tracking down the
information."
Hope this helps,
-Camille Good
Portland, Oregon
Doug Barnhard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
LF's,
Is anyone on the forum aware if the green soldermask on boards contains
halogens?
Douglas Barnhard
Engineering Services
Senior PC Board/CAE Designer
X-Rite Incorporated
3100 44th Street SW
Grandville, MI 49418
Phone 616 257 2227
Email [log in to unmask]
Fax 616 534 2513
xrite.com
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