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July 2011

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Subject:
From:
Bob Landman <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Date:
Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:50:35 -0400
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George,

My products serve the electric utility industry (indirectly some of the telecom equipment, as you know, gets into the electric industry as they have their own telecom departments).  The "Smart Grid" is deploying tons of electronic products and the assumption is that they will do the 25 years of reliability they are used to seeing.  So much of what they use sits in non-air conditioned spaces, on utility poles, in those pad mounted green boxes that absorb heat (and radiate it in the winter unless heaters are deployed (some do have heaters)) and unheated substation buildings.  The power grid is running on untested assembled products, products that used to have 60+ years of experience with lead.  Switchgear shakes considerably when they transition and so the electronics that controls it gets a kick in the head.

I still can't understand how the industry could be so stupid (there's just no better word for it) than to let the EU politicians have their way with a ban on lead in solder.  There should have been a major revolt by Siemens, Philips, Bosch, Marconi, ABB, Airbus, EADS, etc... But there was not.  

They should hang their heads in shame that there was not.

People are going to die, maybe in record numbers, because when the power grid goes down, as was seen here in the USA in 2003, it stays down and it seems to happen in very hot weather.

Shame on the industry for making a bargain with the devil.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: Wenger, George M. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 11:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: [TN] Lead Free solder has performed well...

Bob,

In our telecommunications business the reality is that we have customers around the globe and many have told us that they will only buy telecommunications equipment that are fully RoHS compliant.  Our company as well as our competitors can't afford to maintain two sets of products (RoHS and non-RoHS) and therefore we started very early to do lot of reliability testing on Pb-Free telecommunication products and have continuing reliability efforts to insure our product reliability.  I can't tell you honestly that our Pb-Free products are as reliable as older SnPb products but I can tell you that we do everything we can to insure the reliability of products meets our customer expectations.  The reality is that while the older central office telecommunication equipment had an advertized reliability of 25 years, newer telecommunication equipment that is mounted on towers and exposed to the environment is becoming much more complex and although customers would still like to have 25 year reliability they are accepting equipment with 10 to 15 years reliability. So far the reliability of Pb-Free telecommunication equipment hasn't been a disaster primarily because of the manufacturing, quality and reliability efforts that have been put into these products.  Although our company and other telecommunications equipment provides have done our reliability homework there are lots of us still crossing our fingers and hoping that our Pb-Free products will have our advertized 10 to 15 year reliability.  So far our Pb-Free products have been performing as advertised for 5 to 6 years but I'm not comfortable claiming Pb-Free is a "Grand Success".

Regards,
George
George M. Wenger
Senior Principal Reliability / FMA Engineer Andrew Corporation - Wireless Network Solutions 40 Technology Drive, Warren, NJ 07059
(908) 546-4531 Office (732) 309-8964 Mobile
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bob Landman
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2011 10:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Lead Free solder has performed well...

Bev,

I know you and I think you're a brilliant guy but please qualify your statement with the fact that your company makes THROW AWAY products!  What's the lifetime of a 'crack'berry, 2-3 years?

Sure, RIM can use Pb-free processes (and no-clean) but I CANNOT!  And that's why I and Gordon Davy and Denny Fritz and I searched for a process to stop tin whiskers.  But we have no solution for all the other problems lead-free causes.  Wish we did!!

Nor can biomed, aerospace, telecom or many other critical life sustaining industries tolerate lead-free processes and continue to have the same reliablity.

I have no knowledge of whether or not Ron Lasky has made a fortune on this fiasco, but he's not making things better for those of us in the high rel industries when he makes outrageous statements such as what was said here.

Sincerely,

Bob Landman
H&L Instruments, LLC
LDF Coatings, LLC


-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bev Christian
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 9:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Lead Free solder has performed well...

Richard,
I consider both you and Ron Lasky friends.  I disagree with both him saying it is a "grand success" (without qualification, more on that in a bit) and you saying his opinion is motivated by greed.

I think I know Ron well enough to know it is not greed. I mean he is not getting THAT much $ from Indium. :) All kidding aside, it would be against his moral principles. I think you are too harsh in your comment.

For companies like I work for and many others in the commercial sector, it has been a grand success, but, as you say, at a cost to the environment and it has involved succeeding in a grand and fun and challenging scientific and engineering endeavor.  That surmounting of the struggle by those you named and many others is the "grand success".

Finally, I think George Wenger said it best, I think this is close to a direct quote: "One of the best things mankind has done environmentally is ban tetraethyl lead. One of the worst things we have done is ban tin/lead solder."

With that I close.

Bev

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stadem, Richard D.
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 4:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Lead Free solder has performed well...

I have to agree with George Wenger, Scott Post and many others.

Irresponsible statements like "lead-free solder is a grand success" should NOT be ignored. Those who make such statements in the face of all of the contrary evidence should be noted, and treated as motivated only by greed.
Lead-free soldering certainly has been known for many "thousand$" of successes.

I have learned that it is not even worth the bother to refute such statements with those who make them. It may be a "grand success" for PhDs who contract to solder paste companies, but it certainly has not been a "grand success" to literally thousands of companies dealing with the reliability elephant sitting in the room getting larger by the day, and the associated fallout as a result.

It certainly has not been a success to the environment, because it created many negative environmental impacts where there were none in the first place. As a result of the tin mining issues, as well as billions of additional kilowatt hours needed yearly to reflow the same products, and the loss of reliability that goes hand-in-hand with the elimination of lead in the solder joint, well, it certainly cannot be called anything close to a "grand success".

And it certainly was very poorly planned and implemented. RoHS requirements for lead-free solder were rammed through without any due diligence on the part of the solder companies whatsoever. Ironically, we, an industry that prides itself for its reliability assurance and quality standards and for developing tools such as FMEA, 5 Whys, and other mistake-proofing methods can only shake our heads in dismay and embarrassment from these self-appointed "solder experts" who irresponsibly supported these changes forced upon us by the EU, and are now standing at the pulpit and make such claims as if they were directly responsible for this "Grand $ucce$$".

Indeed, if lead-free solder was a "grand success", it was only so because of the humongous collective effort and the collaboration by the process engineers and scientists and the true reliability experts within the industry such as Werner Engelmaier, Craig Hillman, Dave Hillman, George Wenger, and so many others who were able to identify and respond to all of the issues, which extend well beyond just tin whiskers.

They were able to identify issues such as pad cratering, head-on-pillow, shrinkage cracks, the exacerbation of Black Pad and Brittle nickel due to the lack of lead and higher reflow and rework temperatures, copper dissolution and de-wetting, non-homogeneous mixed-alloy BGA solder joints, PWB issues and component reliability issues from reflow at higher lead-free temperatures, and literally hundreds of other problems that popped up as a result of lead-free solder and RoHS requirements in general.

If an engineer forced through changes like this in a process where I work, without having done the due diligence and thorough qualification required, he would have been fired.

Had not some of true experts been here to identify and solve these issues that resulted from RoHS lead-free requirements, it would have been much more of a fiasco and clusterfooey than it actually was and still is. Can you imagine what something like this would have been like without the benefit of these people and the Technet Forum?

Those in the Forum are the people I will listen to when they declare anything as being a "grand success", not them other smart folks who don't know a Metcal iron from a Hakko wand.


-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Wenger, George M.
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 12:59 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Lead Free solder has performed well...

It seems premature to state "lead-free solder is a grand success" with only five years (July 2006 to July 2011) experience.

Regards,
George
George M. Wenger
Senior Principal Reliability / FMA Engineer Andrew Corporation - Wireless Network Solutions 40 Technology Drive, Warren, NJ 07059
(908) 546-4531 Office (732) 309-8964 Mobile
E-mail: [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eric Christison
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 12:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Lead Free solder has performed well...

http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1389&doc_id=231199&f_src=des
ignnews_gnews

"Dr. Ronald Lasky, Dartmouth professor of engineering and a frequent blogger on solder, claims the transition to lead-free was a grand success. "A lot of people claim that lead-free solder is not as reliable as lead-based solder," Lasky told me. "We're now five years into the implementation of RoHS, and we've made $3 trillion work of electronic.
We haven't really noticed any big change in reliability.""

I thought some of you may be interested in the above article.

Regards,


--
Eric Christison
Consumer&  Micro group
Imaging Division

STMicroelectronics (R&D) Ltd
33 Pinkhill
Edinburgh EH12 7BF
United Kingdom

Tel:    +44 (0)131 336 6165
Fax:    + 44 (0)131 336 6001

The contents of the email are ST confidential.




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