John Burke has questioned whether "the only risk reliability factor for
electronic products required to comply with the RoHS directive is in the
soldering impacting the life of the components and board."  Of course it
is not, as I discussed in my original posting. My comments prompting his
question were in direct response to Werner's comments about loss of life
of boards due to reflow soldering. But I like his comment about "the
global beta site test of lead free reliability." 

John, as for the reliability of the anti-lock brakes in your daughter's
car, you can rest easy for now since automotive electronics are not
covered by RoHS. It should be remembered that failures due to causes
related to RoHS are not the only possible failures, and where a failure
could cause loss of life, manufacturers have always had to design with
possible failures in mind. As I said in my original posting, "The issue
is not whether the risk is nonzero but whether it is tolerable. That is,
in considering options, one must compare risk, benefit, and cost."

The well-publicized (I received at least six emails within two days)
SWATCH failures were due to the growth of tin whiskers, a topic which I
previously addressed. Given that some RoHS-compliant products have now
been on the market since well before the first of July, the absence of
other publicly identified examples of RoHS-related failures suggests to
me that there will not be an avalanche of such failures. I think that if
for some product there were a huge number of failures (say ten percent
of the number sold), the news would be as hard to hide as the laptop
battery problem. 

In fact, when product failures do become known, it will be important to
determine whether the failure was inherently due to having to comply
with RoHS or simply due to a manufacturer's failure to get the kinks
worked out of the design, materials, and processes. As John pointed out,
the industry has gone through other major changes in technology since
the days of DIPs and axial components with leads inserted in
plated-through holes. It survived those changes, and I predict that it
will survive this change too.

And lest anyone get the notion that I have become "soft on RoHS,"  my
opposition to the draft directive began in 1999, at a time when I
thought that (and I still think that) there was some prospect for
derailing the legislation if opposition could be (had been) mobilized. I
repeat that this directive adds cost (huge!) without value. I just don't
think that exaggeration is warranted or wise.

The big RoHS news I still expect will come when 

        a) manufacturers of non-compliant hardware start getting cited
by the compliancy police in one or more EU Member States, or 

        b) manufacturers of compliant hardware go to court to seek
injunctive relief from non-policing of their non-compliant competitors. 

Also, we can be quite certain that environmental activist groups such as
Greenpeace will be vigilant. Does anyone doubt that the people who
conducted the analysis of the pre-RoHS laptop computer are at this
moment analyzing electronic products put on the market after July 1?
Does anyone doubt that Greenpeace would go to court with their findings?
They won't keep any nonconformance they find secret.


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