From personal experience and from other people I've spoken to, these types of suppliers are the most difficult to get information and compliance statements from. The main reason I believe this to be so is that entire electronics industry has been preparing for this change but much less effort has been invested in compliance of "mechanical" parts. Also many of these companies are smaller and therefore have less invested in keeping up with "Lead free electronics". We've found that metal/machining suppliers were mostly unaware of any legislation. So we had to take it upon ourselves to educate the suppliers. If your company has invested time in understanding the legislation then you are probably in a better position to know what compliance means for the particular materials or parts. I would suggest drafting a compliance letter specifying the banned materials and whatever exemptions apply. Send that to the metal supplier and have them sign off on that. If you wait for them to interpret the directives and determine compliance you could be in for a long wait or wrong information. Especially if it's a small company and no one is assigned to handle RoHS compliance. Regards, LS -----Original Message----- From: Genny Gibbard [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 1:32 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Metal compliance Anyone else having major difficulties getting RoHS compliance statements out of your metalwork suppliers? We have companies that provide things like chassis parts, custom standoffs, etc. They are made of things like 6061 Aluminum, stainless steel, etc. These are things that can use the exemption: 6. Lead as an alloying element in steel containing up to 0.35 % lead by weight, aluminium containing up to 0.4 % lead by weight and as a copper alloy containing up to 4 % lead by weight. However, our metalwork vendors are having trouble getting any sort of statement out of their raw materials suppliers, so they are reluctant to issue statements to us. I don't know if it would be an unlikely thing to have higher than the 0.4% Pb in aluminum, or if you need to have some carefully controlled source of aluminum in order to achieve that. Any thoughts? As always, your help is much valued and appreciated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---Leadfee Mail List provided as a 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 Leadfree To temporarily stop/(start) delivery of Leadree for vacation breaks send: SET Leadfree NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/contentpage.asp?Pageid=3D4.3.16 for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-615-7100 ext.2815 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- THIS EMAIL AND ANY ATTACHED FILES ARE CONFIDENTIAL AND MAY BE LEGALLY PRIVILEGED. If you are not the addressee, any disclosure, reproduction, copying, distribution or other dissemination or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email. It is the policy of ACR Electronics, Inc. that no legally binding statements, representations or commitments (collectively statements) may be made by email. Any such statements must be confirmed either by facsimile transmission or by postal mail before they will have legal effect. The sender of this email is not authorised to commit the company in any way and the addressee is hereby notified of that fact. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Leadfee Mail List provided as a 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 Leadfree To temporarily stop/(start) delivery of Leadree for vacation breaks send: SET Leadfree NOMAIL/(MAIL) Search previous postings 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------