Wow, first lead-free victim: Microsoft Xbox 1 billion damage

[Spurious Response]

Wow, first lead-free vicim: Microsoft Xbox 1 billion damage.
I just did read that as a cause of the Xbox problems (red ring of death,
3 blinking red LEDs) now the lead free solder is mentioned.
It desintegrates over time at the high temperatures.
MS fixes it by adding an extra fan and heatpipe.
MS will make a new Xbox design (Falcon).

If this is correct we can expact more multi million PC fun....

Source (in German):
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/92447

Ever stop to think that it may just have extremely poor air handling
design, resulting in poor cooling?

3/32 inch holes through thin sheet metal flow a lot differently than
the same array drilled (molded) into a 5/32 inch thick plastic case
panel.

 

[Spurious Response]

As people generally don't eat or chew electronic equipment the main
reason for the lead part of RoHS (ie the part that affects us) seems to
have been to prevent lead leaching its way back into the ground once
it's discarded and thrown in a landfill.

Metallic form lead poses no "leeching" hazard.

There are no overtly high lead levels found in the water tables around
LEAD MINES! Oh... and Police FIRING RANGES from the '30s on!

I would say that the lead in solder is better bonded than raw lead or
lead ores at a mine.

We had NOTHING to worry about, and the industry dopes in Europe started
this crap to attempt to wrest some form of control, and to boost the
Eurodollar.

It doesn't get any more simple than that.

 

[James Arthur]

[...] Experts presume lead-free
solder used on the (Platine**)--which could become fractured due to
the frequent temperature changes--as one possible cause of the
failures.
[...]

(** sorry, I don't know this word)

PCB.

Cheers for the translation. So, they're suggesting the GPU unsolders itself ?

Graham

Yep. It gets so flaming hot that, expanding, it breaks its solder
joints.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[James Arthur]

Depleted Uranium, of course

martin

Excellent! You know if you spin it fast enough, the radioactivity
centrifuges right out. No, wait, that might be a laundry tip...

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Jim Yanik]

Excellent! You know if you spin it fast enough, the radioactivity
centrifuges right out. No, wait, that might be a laundry tip...

Cheers,
James Arthur

DU still decays into -lead-. ;-)


Worse yet,it forms uranium oxide,and that rubs/washes off.
(but DU is only an alpha emitter,IIRC;not very radioactive.)

 

[Eeyore]

One thing mentioned on joystick.com was that the 'red ring of death' started after
a user started using the xbox on its side.

Probably obscuring some ventilation slots in the process. Users can be a bit stupid.

Maybe the chip just fell of?

It would have to get damn hot to do that.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

No. /

Oh, okay

This is the problem: (differential thermal expansion between solder,
substrate, and components leading to embrittlement and fracture of the
solder under thermal cycling)
http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0162_sctm/index.html

Here's a reference that says Pb-free fractures more easily:
http://www.analogzone.com/grnt1017.pdf

And one that says the opposite:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3776/is_200412/ai_n9473486

Google "thermal solder fatigue" and take your pick.

Yes.

It's not encouraging that the technology of lead-free soldering was so immature when forced on us. If the experts can't agree what hope is there for us 'users' ?

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

Oh My God.

I first had to laugh, but God help us nobody reads it, and starts using it.
Already 1 million Iraqi children and other people will suffer from that shit
for thousands of years to come.

RoHS doesn't ban DU does it ?

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

My guess is they use lead and have not heard about ROHS - yet.

Lead-free balancing weights are widely available. Use google.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

I know there is companies that make a living buying old electronics,
schredding it and extracting the metals, I assume gold from bond
wires and such are one of the big ones. wouldn't surprise me if it
made more sense to extract gold from old electronics than from ore
you have to dig up 2km down

What gold wire ? I thought modern stuff uses aluminium mainly.

Have you come across the BBC programme 'The Apprentice' where a bunch of hopefuls
compete for to work for Alan Sugar's company ?

A couple of years back, the winner was tasked to develop a new 'green' division to
recycle electronics. The project foundered as being not commercially viable.

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/...objectid=19238065&siteid=98487-name_page.html

" The project Michelle was put in charge of on behalf of Sir Alan's firm Xenon Green
was to recycle computers in an environmentally-friendly way. But after researching
the project she told the board it was not viable and should be dropped. "

I could have told them that for free.



Graham

 

[Eeyore]

We had NOTHING to worry about, and the industry dopes in Europe started
this crap to attempt to wrest some form of control, and to boost the
Eurodollar.

I don't think it was an industry driven initiative.

It was all part of a 'green' drive to increase recycling.

The thing is, there seems to be nothing worth recycling in old printed circuit
booards.

Graham

 

[Don McKenzie]

Wow, first lead-free vicim: Microsoft Xbox 1 billion damage.
I just did read that as a cause of the Xbox problems (red ring of death,
3 blinking red LEDs) now the lead free solder is mentioned.
It desintegrates over time at the high temperatures.
MS fixes it by adding an extra fan and heatpipe.
MS will make a new Xbox design (Falcon).

If this is correct we can expact more multi million PC fun....

Source (in German):
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/92447

thermal stressing:
it was an accident waiting to happen.

this is a message I got from a large EU PCB manufacturer a while back:

======================================================================

if you ask me ROHS is nothing but trouble we completely moved to ROHS
in February this year, but had great pressure from Texas Instruments and
ST Microelectronics since September last year and the major problem was
to move out all components with lead plating on their legs away from
our stock, it took about 6 month to completely use all old components
and fill our stock with only lead free components.

now we produce our boards with immersion gold finish which increase the
cost of bare boards by 20% and the lead free soldering alloy and
consumables are at twice higher prices than normal SnPb, all this I
could accept, but the final result is about 20% less reliable boards,
the Pb is the soft component of SnPb alloy, the new Pb-free alloys miss
this "soft" component and are less reliable to vibrations and
temperature changes, as Pb-free soldering joints tend to crack sooner
than SnPb joints when exposed to cold-hot termal shocks, this is why
Pb-free boards are not allowed in medical, military, automotive
applications where reliability is must.




--
Don McKenzie

Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email
No More Damn Spam: http://www.wizard-of-oz.com

Serial OLED uses standard micro-SD memory cards.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16659

USB Flash Drive interface for existing products.
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/product.php?productid=16654

 

[Eeyore]

the Pb is the soft component of SnPb alloy, the new Pb-free alloys miss
this "soft" component and are less reliable to vibrations and
temperature changes, as Pb-free soldering joints tend to crack sooner
than SnPb joints when exposed to cold-hot termal shocks,

I'd like to see more info about that.

this is why Pb-free boards are not allowed in medical, military, automotive
applications where reliability is must.

The Commission has engaged ERATtechnology to look into that exemption with a
view to ending it.

http://www.era.co.uk/news/rfa_feature_12a.asp

Graham

 

[Jan Panteltje]

That's a false scare. I have been witnessing the debate on the radsafe
mailing list for years now, it is a small group (mostly one person),
probably with an agenda he won't admit (he claims he is concerned
about the affected fertility/genetic code of young men because his
teenage daughter may eventually get one of those who are now in Iraq).
The fact is that the amounts in the environment are negligible; even
the "anti" crowd agrees they are no threat because of the
radioactivity,

When a 747 with DU counterweight crashed near where I used to live in Amsterdam,
much of the DU was burned (not found again), and all the firefighters, PLUS the people
sorting and disposing of the junk, have symptoms that are much the same as the guys
who helped on 9/11 and helped clean it up (when 2 DU counter weights burned 100%).
Some research has been done, there are papers on that, that it is dangerous.
If it was to be used in cars sure enough it would pulverise in some cases,
get into the environment, get burned, there you go.

The (very) sad thing with US is that it is so much market driven that many safety issues
are ignored.
nano materials.
genetic manipulated foods.

Now for example it is found that the genetic manipulated crop, that produces some poison to
kill bugs, _also_ kills bees.
No bees no crop.
Very clever.

 

[Didi]

Lead-free balancing weights are widely available. Use google.

Oh, thanks for teaching me that. I am a lot better equipped
now for the next similarly crucial issue I'll have to face.

Dimiter

 

[Rich Grise]

RoHS doesn't ban DU does it ?

But, is it any good for soldering?

And what's all this panic about depleted uranium? Its major feature is
that it's dense. And it's only toxic if you inhale the dust, eat it, or
inject it:
http://www2.itap.purdue.edu/MSDS/docs/10222.pdf

And since it has a half-life of almost five billion years:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00657.htm
it can't be very intensely radioactive.

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Eeyore]

But, is it any good for soldering?

And what's all this panic about depleted uranium? Its major feature is
that it's dense. And it's only toxic if you inhale the dust, eat it, or
inject it:

It's called heavy metal poisoning.

Graham

 

[James Arthur]

When a 747 with DU counterweight crashed near where I used to live in Amsterdam,
much of the DU was burned (not found again), and all the firefighters, PLUS the people
sorting and disposing of the junk, have symptoms

But surely there are all sorts of gaseous nasties produced on a
burning 747 that have nothing to do with depleted uranium, right?
Like burning plastic, foam, wire insulation, paint...

that are much the same as the guys
who helped on 9/11 and helped clean it up (when 2 DU counter weights burned 100%).

DU in the 9/11 cleanup? First I've heard of it. Googling <depleted
uranium new york 9/11> brings up a bunch of bizarre theories.
Oh, here's a(n in)credible source:
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html

It says 1,500 Kg of DU counterweights were used in 747 wings, and
speculates such were involved in 9/11. Alas, the planes that struck
in New York were 767s.

An inconvenient quote:
" ' Boeing has never used DU on either the 757 or the 767,
and we no longer use it on the 747,' Leslie M. Nichols,
product spokesperson for Boeing's 767, told AFP.
'Sometime ago, we switched to tungsten, because it is
heavier, more readily available and more cost effective.' "

Tungsten, okay, but heavier than uranium? Hmm, it seems it actually
is: 19.25 g/cm^3 vs. 19.1g/cm^3 for uranium.

Some research has been done, there are papers on that, that it is dangerous.
If it was to be used in cars sure enough it would pulverise in some cases,
get into the environment, get burned, there you go.

It's a heavy metal, and likely not very nice on that account, but it
doesn't sound especially nasty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Characteristics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium#Precautions

I wonder how it compares with, for example, burning iron. Iron
overdose from vitamins is, AIUI, a--if not the--leading cause of
poisoning deaths in US children.

The (very) sad thing with US is that it is so much market driven that many safety issues
are ignored.
nano materials.
genetic manipulated foods.

Now for example it is found that the genetic manipulated crop, that produces some poison to
kill bugs, _also_ kills bees.
No bees no crop.
Very clever.

Not ignored, discovered. If you're the first to do something, you're
also often the first to discover it wasn't a good idea!

Best regards,
James Arthur

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

I'd like to see more info about that.



The Commission has engaged ERATtechnology to look into that exemption with
a
view to ending it.

http://www.era.co.uk/news/rfa_feature_12a.asp

Graham

I think The Commision should agree to use the protypes of the ROHS-compliant
pacemakers First!

 

[Eeyore]

DU in the 9/11 cleanup? First I've heard of it. Googling <depleted
uranium new york 9/11> brings up a bunch of bizarre theories.
Oh, here's a(n in)credible source:
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/depleted_uranium.html

It says 1,500 Kg of DU counterweights were used in 747 wings, and
speculates such were involved in 9/11. Alas, the planes that struck
in New York were 767s.

An inconvenient quote:
" ' Boeing has never used DU on either the 757 or the 767,
and we no longer use it on the 747,' Leslie M. Nichols,
product spokesperson for Boeing's 767, told AFP.
'Sometime ago, we switched to tungsten, because it is
heavier, more readily available and more cost effective.' "

Yes, DU ceased being used for the counterweights ages back.

Tungsten, okay, but heavier than uranium? Hmm, it seems it actually
is: 19.25 g/cm^3 vs. 19.1g/cm^3 for uranium.

Yes, German armour piercing shells are tungsten tipped not DU AIUI.

I found this curiosity en-route....

" On February 20, 2001, a truck leaving the recycling firm IMCO Recycling of Ohio, Inc. in
Uhrichville, OH, set off the radiation monitor at the facility's exit. The truck was carrying
ingots of aluminum from recycled airplane parts. Further investigation by the company determined
that depleted uranium counterweights had been among the aluminum airplane parts that were melted
and processed into the ingots. Depleted uranium counterweights were also found among aluminum
parts awaiting melting.
A total of 118,000 pounds (53.5 metric tonnes) of aluminum ingots were found to be contaminated
with depleted uranium. Radiation levels were measured to be about 50 microRoentgen per hour
(several times normal background radiation levels). "

http://www.wise-uranium.org/dviss.html

Graham