Hi folks... I am burdened with a somewhat 'unpopular' thought that I feel I need to share with you for Friday, August 5, 2005... less than 1 Year to the RoHS deadline... not long... I ask you...Is it just me or does anyone else out there think this RoHS initiative thing is totally nuts? I mean really? Be honest...does it make ANY sense to you? It's strange, I have not seen so much artificially created stress in any industry as the stress I see in this one over the RoHS initiative... folks are scrambling to comply with this initiative to remove the lead from solder, components, IC's, you name it everything but car batteries... and people are really having issues... reliability, bad solder, failures... shorter product life, I guess the customer service industry in India will have expanded work to do to deal with all the customers that will have lead free product issues... Excuse me.... Why can't we 'JUST SAY NO' to the European Union and let them deal with not being able to buy our products over there? They are really only about 20 percent of the world market after all... Aren't we still selling products to the rest of the world? It occurs to me, the people over there really won't suffer, there's a black market isn't there? They use it already... They will get what they want anyway... they'll just pay more for it through the black market brokers... why are we letting them dictate the industry and it's direction? What do WE stand to gain from this degradation of our assembly processes??? Just more products that fail early due to tin whiskers? Why not let the Europeans lobby their governments to revoke the Lead Free ban so they don't have to buy their computers on the black market... why is this our problem? Really... think about it... I think sometimes we might need a counter marketing campaign, one that says, "Lead is good... Lead is our friend" it makes the solder stable, and reliable and compliant and resilient and manufacturable... USE TIN/LEAD SOLDER... it's good for the environment, it's good for your family, it's good for your electronic products... 'JUST SAY -NO- TO RoHS' I think it might just work... change the tide... stop the losses this industry will suffer from going down this path... WHY DO WE WANT TO MAKE INFERIOR PRODUCTS without the KEY ingredient in STABLE RELIABLE BRIGHT 'non-tin whisker' growing TIN/LEAD solder??? Hmmm????? Planned obsolescence maybe? I don't get it... Someone needs to tell the 'Emperor' over there his new 'wardrobe' made of invisible clothes is really not there... wake up Europe... this is really not the answer to the so called 'Green revolution'... your lobbyists are screwing your own countries businesses and economies and the world's markets as well. I just don't get the 'lemmings' in this industry... Hey... let's all just follow the EU over the cliff... no industry, no products, no lead, problem solved. Wow... what a concept... I really thought people were smarter than this... when will the insanity stop? ... this one makes no sense to me at all. On that note, (I feel so much better now after getting it off my chest)... Have a terrific weekend, and, uh... 'don't forget to water the 'grass' growing on your new lead-free PCB's' That new tin whisker 'lawn mower' will come in handy for keeping your computer running for years to come... ;) JUST SAY NO to Lead Free... think about it... it could work... after all it was working before wasn't it? If the EU wants to make an environmental difference, have them lobby to get the Mercury out of our FISH... now that's a worthwhile cause... Just do an Internet Google search http://www.google.com on Mercury levels in Fish... and the effects of mercury poisoning in people... Also see what these guys have to say about it... http://www.mercola.com/2001/apr/25/mercury_fish.htm Way worse and more pervasive than lead poisoning... and won't affect our electronics industry at all... Happy Friday... Bill Brooks - KG6VVP PCB Design Engineer, C.I.D.+, C.I.I. Tel: (760)597-1500 Ext 3772 Fax: (760)597-1510 Datron World Communications, Inc. _______________________________________ San Diego Chapter of the IPC Designers Council Communications Officer, Web Manager http://dcchapters.ipc.org/SanDiego/ http://pcbwizards.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DesignerCouncil Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF DesignerCouncil. To temporarily stop/(restart) delivery of DesignerCouncil send: SET DesignerCouncil NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------