RoHS and lead free soldering

The RoHS directive is today well known and set limits of use of certain materials in electronic products. The main issue is the lead free soldering. Polyamp has well before the implementing date used what is called RoHS components and circuit boards. The RoHS directive is getting hot again as it is under revision. Click on read more below to get latest news (February 2011) Lead free soldering is not so easy when you wave solder on large copper areas which we have in higher power DC/DC converters. Polyamp supply to industrial, military or transportation industry, which is not currently in the scope of the RoHS directive.  A Polyamp customer must specify RoHS to be 100% sure to receive such unit. However following product families are produced 100% lead free: PM50 / PM80 -series PM150 / PM240 -series PU300 / PU500 - series PU600 / PU1000 - series PC1000 / PC2000 - series All other models can be supplied with lead free on demand. For fresh news (February 2011) regarding RoHS click on read more. The latest news Mars 2011. The revised RoHS directive is in its final state and has to be approved within a ministry meeting and then published in the OJ. We have not seen the final document, therefore dates might not be exact. The scope is widened to all electric and electronic products depending on <1000Va.c. and <1500Vd.c., which is the same as the low voltage directive LVD. The intension is to exclude vehicles, military equipment and space. The 10 product groups remain with an addition of a number 11 that cover other EEE not covered by cathegories 1 - 10. The time frame to comply is between 2016-2017 depending on which of, some of the old product groups, your product group belongs to. If you fall in between those groups (e.g. electric vehicles, underground, street cars, windmills, solar energy etc.) no time is indicated. The other main change is that the ROHS directive will be harmonised, which its not the case at the moment.  There is a reference on how the compliance process should be performed that absolutetely do not fit for RoHS. As they think the IEC process is slow they intend to make "Implemnting measures" like in the EUP directive. Some of the exceptions will be cancelled but new will be introduced. The RoHS will also be a part of the CE mark, which it is not today. (Polyamp already put it in our CE Certificates, when we deliver Lead free soldering.) It seam no new substances will be included in the Annex IV, in spite of hard lobying from the environmental side. However there will be an annex III with a number of potential candidates, probably selected from the SVHC list. In February 2011 REACH has published that a number of substances will be banned for use 2013 and 2014. For the electronic industry it means the suppliers of components and plastic cases have to be carefull. The Phthalates are plastic softeners, which are very difficult to measure and quantify. How to handle that? As the ban is on the REACH side it falls under the >0.1% weight restriction and most probably no electronic equipment will fall under that scope. The ban is also applied on all use in any industry, therefore it is not a specific Electronic industry problem, its general. In this case we can be slightly cool but it illustrate the problem between RoHS and REACH.  Read more about REACH. The Swedish authority KemI handles the RoHS directive in Sweden. (We have still not found a good information site in english, the EU comission website is just confusing) You should know that the authorities think RoHS was a big success. We that work in the Power Supply business are not that happy,  due to the lead free soldering. {FacileForms:ContactWeb_TextCode_en,1,0}

Last Updated on Sunday, 20 February 2011 09:23