me wrote in message
...
Eeyore wrote in
:

The debate about lead free solders seem to be nearly as politically
charged as that about anthropogenic global warming and a casualty seems
to be useful data.

I've read plenty of comments to the effect that lead-free is less
reliable in the long term (vibration seems to be a key weakness AIUI -
maybe also thermal cycling) which presumably explains the exemptions
for certain categories, yet I've also seen some studies that claim it
can out-perform lead containing solders.

Is there any real hard and fast information out there that one can rely
on ?

Graham



If it were better than lead solders there would not be any exemptions
needed, every thing would be required to be lead free. Critical (Mil,
Aero, etc)equipment gets an exemption though...

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Follow the derogations/exemptions.
Military , aerospace & medical do have derogation from WEEE and RoSH, but
can anyone nail down precisely why they are exempted.
The suggestion from the following would be they are maverics putting
themselves in an awkward position regarding spares etc.

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/iemr...202015%20Makin
g%20a%20Visible%20Difference%20EIGT%20Report.pdf

"... Much equipment manufactured before the application of RoHS will suffer
premature obsolescence, as component parts which have been modified to meet
the RoHS requirement may not be compatible. Businesses supplying sectors
such as defence, medical, instrumentation and control, currently have a
derogation from the regulation in Europe.
But this poses problems for the future availability of lead-free
components. This issue has product lifetime implications for public sector
purchases as well as business implications to those supplying export markets
where RoHS standards do not yet apply. ..."


The real conspiracy would be if it could be shown what manufacturing
industries deliberately went with lead-free knowing that their products
would fail due to that and not component failure, knowing they would sell
more product.
The engineers I have talked to in UK industry are genuinly unaware of
in-service problems in electronic products, due to their enforced lead-free
soldering. But the ones I know are in scientific/technical kit and
instrumentation production so not subjected to vibrational environments.
Do automotive electronics have a derogation ? as that would be an area that
would soon show up lead-free solder problems.


--
Diverse Devices, Southampton, England
electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/