That's a negative. There are no stinky or discolored laminates in our reflow ovens. LG sent a letter stating their FR-4 cores and prepreg can be used in a lead-free process. All other suppliers passed on the request. However, our own internal testing (hundreds of assembled boards going through thousands of hours of tempcycle testing on a regular basis) showed a "what's the big deal?" for the low (and high) Tg standard regular regular FR-4 laminates (as well as Halogen free laminates). Solder joints and components fail long before the laminate, regardless of the lead-free process. Granted, our own lead-free process does not peak at 260C but at 240C, and our finished product is only 0.050" thick or less. Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Bill Decray [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 11:09 AM To: 'TechNet E-Mail Forum'; rgrant Subject: RE: [TN] Lead-free, and not lead-free... Hello Ryan, So is it fair to say that all of your PCBs are made with materials that have a high Td Highest Regards William W. DeCray III V.P. of Sales and Marketing Waytec Electronics Corp. Desk: (434) 237-6391 ext 115 Cell : (434) 851-6115 Fax : (434) 237-1324 Web: www.waytec.com -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ryan Grant Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 12:59 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [TN] Lead-free, and not lead-free... Hi Steve, We're doing it no sweat! :) O.K., just kidding. Actually, it hasn't been too bad, we require our solder paste suppliers to visually mark their tubes with a "green" color so they aren't easily mixed. (green because it make you sick that lead-free is touted as environmentally friendly). At first the lead-free solder paste was called out on the BOM. Now lead-free solder is the rule and leaded solder paste is called out on the BOM. Initially, this meant a slightly higher solder paste scrap, but that has subsided as used solderpaste is transferred to the next "like solderpaste" build. You can use lead-free, non-BGA components on all leaded BOM's, so our component suppliers were driven hard to supply only lead-free. We used up all our leaded component inventory and replaced it with lead-free before making the full switch. Of course, there are some stragglers, but they are controlled by the BOM. You "could" maintain both lead-free and leaded components in inventory and manage them through the BOM, but that means duplicating components. For about a year, we had that unfortunate situation while the conversion took place. It is best to convert to backward compatible components, i.e. Lead-free whenever possible to prevent the component duplication. We've only had one incident over two years where work instruction were not followed and leaded solder paste was used instead of lead-free with a lead-free reflow profile. Our reliability testing has shown the higher reflow temperature does not cause any loss in reliability for our product; but just to be safe, we redirected that build to specific low-grade consumer markets. As an OEM, we have that luxury. Our process is fully SMT and no-clean, so we get off a little easier than you. However, I've never heard of a shop allowing production operators to add solder to the pot. This is typically relegated to Equipment Support technicians, so unless your shop is different, the number of employees "accidentally" contaminating the pot with lead is minimal and easier to control. Accidentally contaminating a lead-free build by building on a leaded wave is a greater concern. We have a particular line that was not capable of lead-free so our planning department had to manage what builds went on what line. But again, production planning is a very limited group, thus no mistakes. Assuming a lead-free build was contaminated with lead from the wave, you could recover the product using a manual lead-free rework fountain. That would be easier to replace the eventually contaminated pot and keep pure. Ideally, you would convert all wave solder machines to lead-free, assuming all your leaded customers agree to the change. Then the only risk is production operators using the wrong solder paste. Good luck on the conversion. Ryan Grant -----Original Message----- From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Gregory Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 6:21 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [TN] Lead-free, and not lead-free... Hi All! I've got a problem that I've been worrying about all weekend. It may come to pass that we will be building both lead-free, and standard 63/37 stuff...whoa is me. I'm interested in stories from those that have done that...what the hell did you do? Is this something that can be done? It probably can, but me, being the pessimistic sort, thinks that you're just asking for trouble when you try to mix the two... -Steve Gregory --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 -----------------------------------------------------