TABLE OF CONTENTS Strategies for lead-free transition
Held at the Rohm & Haas Electronic Materials Europe Limited, Circuit Board Technology Divisional Headquarters in Coventry on Wednesday, 21 April 2004
Keywords ICT, Lead-free, Seminars
Peter Starkey welcomed delegates to the seminar, which was devoted to the theme of lead-free, and its implications for bare board manufacturers and electronics manufacturing service providers. He introduced the first speaker, Dr Martin Goosey (Plate 7) Research Fellow at Rohm & Haas (formerly Shipley), who talked about the imminent legislation on soldering and assembly, and how it will affect the industry.
Europe produces 6.5 million tonnes of electronic waste per annum and 90 percent goes to landfill. Landfill availability will change in the UK in the coming months, with the number of sites being dramatically reduced. Worryingly, the whole recycling infrastructure is currently underdeveloped. That is the physical situation, but the EC WEEE Directive covers 10 sectors and the RoHS Directive applies to them all except medical equipment. The RoHS Directive seeks to reduce the environmental impact of WEEE by restricting the use of certain hazardous materials which may be used in electronic equipment manufacturing, and as such lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls and two specific polybrominated diphenyl ethers will be banned from 1 July 2006.
It is the removal of lead that has the biggest impact. Lead is widely used, and the new alloys introduced to replace it behave differently. Materials and processes...
