Hi Joe, We've known each other for quite a few years and you know I hold you in high regard and appreciate your "very out of the box" thinking and your contributions to the industry. You also know that I have a very open mind to new technologies and processes. I've also known Dr. Ron Lasky for many years and consider him a close friend and valued colleague. Dr. Ron is a very open-minded and objective thinker. While he does have a consulting affiliation with a solder company, he is an independent thinker and beholden to no one. He does not "sell solder" nor does he have any vested interest in any solder or materials company. He is foremost, among other things, an accomplished and popular professor at Dartmouth. Anyone who has ever met Dr. Ron and engaged him in conversation soon realize that he is an incredible "thinker". I personally believe that some of the "downsides" of the Occam process Dr. Ron has presented are quite legitimate. They are worthy of consideration and discussion and should not be dismissed as something akin to "conflict of interest". It would be in the best interests of everyone, Joe, if you address the issues Dr. Ron has raised and, perhaps engage him in debate rather than dismiss him in a way I really don't think you meant to. Sincerely, Phil Zarrow ITM Consulting Durham, NH USA _www.ITMconsulting.org_ (http://www.ITMconsulting.org) In a message dated 2/17/2008 5:08:17 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: Hello Robert, I trust all is well with you in the great Pacific Northwest. It has been a while since we've crossed paths. Thanks for taking time to pose your questions. I'd like to share my thoughts with you on the subject. First, I personally don't think there is any such thing as a panacea. Nor must the Occam process be a panacea to be considered a success, it must simply fill a particular need successfully. That aside, over time there have always come along some new technologies that had some advantage in some areas over some incumbent technology or process solution. But in the present situation, solder is not going to go away immediately because of Occam. There is simply too much invested in equipment and people will want to take advantage both of what they have and what they know. As one bit of supporting evidence, I would note that you can still buy DIPs even though they are clearly cannot match the size, performance or manufactured cost benefits of SMT parts. As for Dr. Ron Lasky's "less than all embracing" attitude, he is selling solder technology for a living and is not likely to be supportive of any assembly method or process that proposes to obviates solder's use. Dr. Ron's "meet the enemy at the gate and attack the threat" approach is thus easy to understand (though his problem statements are a bit off track in my humble opinion). Sierra Proto is not as easy to explain since they have been talking about researching the embedment of resistors and using plating for interconnections. No worries, in either case, technologies evolve at their own pace and there are those who choose to risk and drive evolution and those who choose to play safe and follow. It is normal. Then again, if some folks in this industry did not risk developing soldering equipment many years ago, we would still be twisting wires together, so "hats off" to those who chose to drive that early change from which we have all so greatly benefited. Another good thing, at least in this industry, there is room for everyone at the table even those who question the need to change. Back to your comments... You might have read last week that Georgia Tech has just announced its own efforts to eliminate solder but that is just the latest. There is a growing number of house hold name companies around the globe that have nascent efforts underway to examine the potential of solderless assembly of their products especially in high reliability applications. For example a company in Brazil has built and in building assemblies for evaluation for a customer greatly concerned about all of the problems of lead-free that continue to be discussed on a daily basis in this forum. Of course, the proof will be "in the pudding" as the saying goes. and to answer the question daisy chain assemblies will be run side by side with lead-free assemblies. Which ones will fail first? That will be seen and you might have your own predictions but to be honest with you, I have never seen anyone shake, mechanically shock or thermal cycle the circuits traces off of a PCB and industry experience with over square aspect ratio plated copper vias has been very good. Ultimately, it is about have some small measure of willingness to embrace a little change and as the editor of one Japanese technical magazine said to his readers in an article he wrote about the Occam process late last year: "When evolution happens, always there is resistance". Fortunately, he was someone whom it appears is in favor of change and evolution or he would not have written the article. I look forward to showing you some of the demonstration assemblies that have been already built the next time we meet. I'll buy the beer... :-) Very best, Joe In a message dated 2/17/2008 8:05:26 AM Pacific Standard Time, [log in to unmask] writes: I have been reading about the OCCAM process and the rebuttal of people like Dr. Ron Lasky and companies like Seirra Protr Express. Does anyone have an opinion regarding the process and what are its chances of being the panacea for eliminating the lead free process? Robert Hanson **************Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. (http://living.aol.com/video/how-to-please-your-picky-eater/rachel-campos-duff y/ 2050827?NCID=aolcmp00300000002598) --------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a service by IPC using LISTSERV 15.0 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 ----------------------------------------------------- **************Ideas to please picky eaters. Watch video on AOL Living. 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