Re: Swatch kills RoHS

Thank you for the information.

Robert Baer wrote:
May 18, 2006
THE SWATCH GROUP IS GOING BACK TO LEAD SOLDER-PRECURSOR FOR THE
ELECTRONICS WORLD?

Yes, folks, it's true. The major Swiss, major world watchmaker, with
going-on $4B sales, one quarter of world watch production, diligently
did the lead-free R&D for 2 years, went into lead-free production 13
months in advance of the RoHS deadline, and then disaster. Tin whiskers
got them, shorting circuits both in the quartz crystal resonator and
fine pitch electronic systems. Now the Swatch Group is applying for an
exemption from RoHS so they can go back to lead.
Between you and me, I'll bet that if we could get into one of their 180
factories we'd see good old 63-37-- that is, 37% lead-being used right
now. The "Requested Exemption" came from the legal department, 16 pages
in the English language edition, complete with tin whisker pictures.
And you know that the Technical Adaption Committee, set up by the
European parliament's Environmental Commission to shepherd the
transition to lead-free, etc will advise granting the exemption. The
Swatch Group even tentatively "offered" to consider using the 90% tin
alloy which is allowed under RoHS.

The critical dimension at which tin whisker shorting became a
production- line- stopping problem was 0.8mm, that is, 32 mils-it might
as have been a meter in electronic interconnections these days. So the
Swatch Group has given us a preview of what we will see en masse. For
those who escape tin whiskers, lead-free solder has some other treats in
store. There are Kirkendall voids-they cause open circuits as copper
diffuses into tin without lead alloyed, leaving voids behind. There are
Conductive Anodic Filaments, leakage paths in the PCB, a mechanism
accelerated by the high processing temperatures of lead-free. Dongkai
Shangguan of Flextronics has put a book together describing these
lead-free solder problems and more: Lead-free Solder Interconnect
Reliability (Hardcover) Dongkai Shangguan (Editor)
Publisher : ASM International
Copyright Year : 2005 Number of Pages : 350

The Requested Exemption from the Swatch Group has pictures of tin
whiskers. They used 99.5Sn 0.5Cu, no Ag, so not the SAC alloy, which
also contains silver. But the EU Commission dare not mandate them to
use Ag. The tin-copper alloy is generally used for wave soldering and
lead-free HASL. Besides they know Ag is a biocide. Mine silver and you
usually get lots more lead. I think that the exemption will be granted
for the following reasons.
1) It comes from the company's legal department and if the Swatch Group
is forced to stop making watches...I don't think I have to go on,
because that is almost the way they put it.
2) The Environmental Commission has a lot on its plate-constructive
initiatives. Why risk egg on its face? Why fight in court or in the
court of public opinion for an ecologically, environmentally damaging
ban on lead in solder? Stavros Dimas, the Environmental Commissioner,
has already acknowledged that lead-free will require greatly increased
energy.
3) WEEE, Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment already mandates
recycling populated printed circuit boards, somewhat as lead-acid
batteries are recycled now. So the ban on electronic lead was always
over-kill.

In conclusion, I'd like to make 2 nominations for the Electronic
Diogenes Award of 2006: 1) the Swatch Group and 2) John Burke of
www.rohsusa.com, john@xxxxxxxxxxxx He has created a blog site that
enables the thousands of engineers who have been muted by the lead-free
steamroller to speak out about the mis-conceived ban. Most still have
to remain anonymous for now because of fear and company pressures. That
may be changing. The award for John should be a Swiss watch-one of the
20 brands made by the Swatch Group, a top brand Longines, Omega, or
Tissot. I'm going to make my own award today to the Swatch Group. I'm
going out to buy a Swatch.
Harvey Miller
harvey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
650-630-1192 cell
650-328-4550 land

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