The Impact of RoHS on COMPLEX PCBs

The transition to lead-free wave soldering has brought with it many challenges. Many people may not know that lead-free assembly processes are not new. Lead-free wave soldering has been around for many years. Long before the RoHS legislation, electronics assemblies that experience high service tempe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Printed circuit design & manufacture 2006-10, Vol.23 (10), p.18
Main Author: Shea, Chrys
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Assembly lines
Design engineering
Environmental regulations
Hazardous materials
Lead free solders
Printed circuit boards
Soldering
Tin
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The transition to lead-free wave soldering has brought with it many challenges. Many people may not know that lead-free assembly processes are not new. Lead-free wave soldering has been around for many years. Long before the RoHS legislation, electronics assemblies that experience high service temperatures used tin-silver solder because of its higher melting point. When RoHS requirements came to the mainstream of assembly, the first products to transition were also comparatively simple and included consumer electronics, utilizing single- or double-sided PCBs, with relatively trouble-free SMT devices on the solder side of the PCB. As thicker, higher-layer count PCBs and more complex assemblies make the transition, the difference between the tin-lead and lead-free processes grows. On simpler assemblies, a robust lead-free soldering process could be dialed-in by tweaking the existing tin-lead process. There are many unanswered questions about blow holing in lead-tree soldering, and a root cause cannot be positively assigned at this time.
ISSN:1939-5442
2153-0912