[time-nuts] OT: RoHS crap

[Gerald Molenkamp]

Hi Poul,

I think your point of view is correct.

I manufacture Fibre based GE + TDM Telecommunications products sold to the 
European and Asia market with exceptional reliability to operate within the 
Power industry. They demand 99.999% availability end to end and devices with 
time deterministic parameters for operating fail safe and protection 
signalling systems.

As we speak/type, much of the old generation equipment is being replaced by 
very new cutting edge electronics with endless functionality. This causes 
massive disposal problems in Europe, Australia and many other countries that 
are just starting to realise the impact hazardous waste has on the ground 
water, irrespective if you have a large land mass or not.

Our business has to-date spent a small fortune changing all our design & 
production facilities to meet with RoHS 5 and by the end of the year RoHS 6. 
However I can not say the same for many first world Countries, who wish to 
continue to dump their so called compliant stock on the market.

Actually we are so far ahead, we are winning business because of the leap in 
compliance and further more it has made us realise that RoHS is a perfect 
opportunity to totally enhance our products using the latest semies, thus 
future proofing them for the next 5 years, 2 to 3 years ahead of our 
competitors. It is amazing what one can do when pushed.

RoHS 5 is an interesting mandate, Lead based solder can still be used as 
long as the components are a mixture of RoHS and not, RoHS 6 must comply 
will 100% lead free components and solder process. Both work well, infact we 
have GE fibre based system in place operating to +60 Degrees C, these items 
have been in service for 2 years +. A recent Audit did not show any yield 
issues.

I think it is time that all first world Countries cleans up their act, 
hopefully this will leave a better place for our children and children's 
children, I am all for it.

Please take a moment to review the following:-

http://www.rohsguide.com/?gg=us&kw=rohs%20compliance&gclid=COayjM_k5IkCFQloYAodqWjeGw


Happy soldering.

Gerald


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" 
<time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 5:49 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] OT: RoHS crap


> In message <45AC324E.9070102 at erols.com>, Chuck Harris writes:
>
> Chuck, you are entitled to your opinions, but some of your
> assumptions indicate that you havn't been in Europe for
> any amount of time, so I'll just correct those of of your
> mistakes that applies to over here:
>
>>Oh darn!   Another toothless regulation.
>
> Calling anything with a 99.9% success rate toothless is stupid.
>
>>Incinerators are a perfect place to scrub these metals out of the
>>waste stream.  Perhaps we need to perfect the pollution controls
>>on incinerators? ...or better still, eliminate incinerators?
>
> Europe does not have vast tracts of land we can use for landfills,
> and we care enough about the oceans to not just dump our shit
> unfiltered into them.
>
>>That logic doesn't follow:  The lead in gasoline was by design destined
>>to enter the atmosphere.
>
> No.  Originally it was argued that it would deposit inside the
> exhaust and be eliminated/recycled along with the car.
>
> Then much later on, independent researches found lots of lead in
> city smog and only after they directly proved its heritage did Ethyl
> Corp admit that "could be a possibility" and that they never really
> researched it in the first place.
>
>>The only reason lead was taken out of gasoline was to
>>facilitate catalytic converters, and smog reduction.
>
> No.  The reason lead was taken out of gasoline was to reduce
> the amount of lead in childrens blood.
>
>>> Finally I'll cordially remind you gentlemen that there were similar
>>> dire predictions when gasoline additives where changed from alcohols
>>> to ethyl-lead and again when ethyl-lead was banned.
>>
>>Of course cars now cost 5 to 10 times as much as they did in 1976 when
>>lead was banned from gasoline in the US.  In the US, this fact keeps a
>>lot of very old, and marginally safe cars on the road.
>
> And ?  Would it have been better to keep polluting our kids with lead ?
>
> Or are you saying that cars are 5 to 10 times as expensive because
> of the catalytic converter ?
>
> Anyway, it's hard to take seriously any complaint about cars from
> a country where the most asked for extra feature is the roof mounted
> machine-gun for the hummer :-)
>
>>> (Who will use SnPb solder until he runs out, probably 10 years from 
>>> now.)
>>
>>I'm sorry Poul, if you use that Sn/Pb solder, knowing what you *know*,
>>then you are a hypocrite.
>
> No it isn't.
>
> I bought my current roll of solder four years ago and you can still
> barely see that I've used any of it, so the amount of lead we are
> talking about is vanishing small (hence the 10 years).  Furthermore
> the resulting constructions only leave my lab for certified electronics
> recycling.
>
> There is such a thing like personal responsibility, even without
> a constitutional right to bear guns :-)
>
> -- 
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by 
> incompetence.
>
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