Lead free solder - exposed in a UK national newspaper

[N_Cook]

Protection of the environment was the ticket on which RoHS in general - and
this substitute lead-free technology in particular - was originally sold to
an unsuspecting world. It seems to me that those who make up this
eco-legislation (as they go along, I suspect) are now discovering the error
of their original concept as to why the mature and proven lead solder
technology needed replacing, and are now seeking to bury that error in a
different concept altogether. I can't remember ever before seeing any
reference anywhere to RoHS being primarily to improve the ease and safety of
WEEE recycling, rather than as an environmental issue.

So, far from this article "refuting the gloom and doom", I think it serves
only to further highlight the well known shortcomings of lead-free solder
technology, and unfortunately for Mr England's case, I don't believe that
his letter holds a candle to the two from the other side of the coin, which
preceded it.

Arfa

What exactly can be recycled from say a PC?
As far as I can see the steel casing and perhaps some copper if it is not
too widely distributed , fragmented, needing human separation and plastic
separation environmental problems.
RoHS for recycling implies component level recycling - recycling 3 to 10
year old pc ICs - pull the other one.
Failing that, recycling processed sand and hard plastic after desoldering,
very unlikely. Leaves just the solder itself, which is just as recyclable
with or without lead presumably .

 

[Arfa Daily]

What exactly can be recycled from say a PC?
As far as I can see the steel casing and perhaps some copper if it is not
too widely distributed , fragmented, needing human separation and plastic
separation environmental problems.
RoHS for recycling implies component level recycling - recycling 3 to 10
year old pc ICs - pull the other one.
Failing that, recycling processed sand and hard plastic after desoldering,
very unlikely. Leaves just the solder itself, which is just as recyclable
with or without lead presumably .

That would appear to me to be the nub of the matter, so it sounds as though
you agree with me that this 'ease of recycling' thing is a subtle shift of
tack to better handle the changing wind direction ...

I know that they do recover gold from gold-plated connectors and IC pins,
but other than that, I agree that there's not a lot that can be recycled
from a purely practical point of view in terms of cost-effectiveness, both
from purely monetary and energy budget considerations.

Arfa

 

[Eeyore]

I know that they do recover gold from gold-plated connectors

A couple of microns ?

and IC pins

Since when have "IC pins" had gold on them ?

but other than that, I agree that there's not a lot that can be recycled

Indeed and it seems almost no-one in Europe wants to touch the stuff. Trying to
'recycle' electronics pcbs strikes me as an utter waste of time. What do end up
with of any use ? Nothing !

Graham

 

[Arfa Daily]

A couple of microns ?


Since when have "IC pins" had gold on them ?

Since they put about a million of them on the bottom of a big chunk of
ceramic, called it a processor chip, and then tried to persuade all those
pins to make a good electrical connection via a ZIF socket ...

I saw a TV programme about a facility in the UK that recycles computers, and
removes the gold from various bits and pieces at a 'secret' location, and I
was astounded by the amounts of gold that were recovered, that not only made
this worth it from a recycling point of view, but also extremely financially
lucrative for the company doing it.

Take a look at this link for more facts than I could give you

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs060-01/fs060-01.pdf

Arfa

 

[StickThatInYourPipeAndSmokeIt]

Eeyore wrote:



Since perhaps 1960 when cerdips first appeared and for
milspec packages of various sorts. Not so much after
1979 or so.

Michael

We buy and use IC chips with gold pins, which we form, and recycle the
cut leads from.

You are only about three decades off, and the industry has NOT stopped
using them.

Mil spec parts have gold all over the connection wires and leads on
many of the devices made out there.

Since the advent of COTS, designs typically incorporate both mil and non
mil parts together to complete a design for a contract.

In other words... whatever it takes to get 'er done!

 

[JosephKK]

Ah, OK. I see what you're saying now. I guess that LED lighting is going to
become the standard when they can get them high enough powered. This can't
be too far away, as I see that car manufacturers are starting to experiment
with LED headlights.

I have more than one co-worker with a car with LED headlights.
Infinity, Lexus, BMW and others do this already.

Already, Audi seem to have LED front running lights,
set into the headlight units, and some of the front lamps used on bicycles
now output enough light to see the road ahead.

I have LED bicycle headlights myself.

A local night club had
coloured floodlights on the front of the building, which were LED based, and
I was amazed at just how good a job they did.

Elektor magazine carried out an interesting project last month. They took a
DLP video projector with a standard expensive HID lamp and colour wheel, and
canibalised it to fit an array of red, green and blue Luxeon LEDs in its
place. They then programmed up a cheap microcontroller to emulate the
rotation of the colour wheel, by switching the colours of the LEDs with 3
FETs. They also fed a colour sync signal from the micro to the original
optical sync pickup, so that the LED switching remained synced to the DLP
chip drive. Colour balance was achieved by tweaking the 'on' times of the
LED colours, in software.

The conclusion was that although not as bright as the original HID lamp, the
projector did produce a perfectly useable picture, which proved what they
set out to, which was that it was perfectly possible to use LEDs in place of
a lamp, and that it would be just as good, once they had got the luminous
output up just a bit more.

Arfa

And the last is a nice change from jumbotrons.