ROHS Compliant
ROHS Compliance
RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive
The RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC came into force in Europe on 1st July 2006. This Directive restricts the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment put on the European market after this date.
Teddington Electronics has been producing RoHS Compliant assemblies since May 2005...
Some people mistakenly refer to this Directive as 'Lead Free'. There are in fact six substances restricted under this Directive with lead being one of them. The six restricted substances and the concentration value in a homogenous material are listed below.
| Hazardous Substance | Maximum Level |
|---|
| Cadmium (Cd) | 0.01% (100ppm) |
| Lead (Pb) | 0.1% (1000ppm) |
| Mercury (Hg) | 0.1% (1000ppm) |
| Hexavalent Chromium (CrVl) | 0.1% (1000ppm) |
| Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBB’S) | 0.1% (1000ppm) |
| Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE’s) | 0.1% (1000ppm) |
What does this mean?
As of the 1st July 2006 any electronic or electrical equipment sold within the EU must not contain more than the permitted maximum levels of these six hazardous materials.
There are however some products that are exempt or out of the scope of the RoHS Directive. Certain Military, Medical, Monitoring and Control Instrumentation are exempt from the restriction of lead in solder; it does not however mean that these products are exempt from the restriction of the other five hazardous substances.
What has Teddington Electronics been doing about this Directive?
As this is probably the biggest challenge to hit the electronics industry we have been working on meeting this Directive since mid 2004.
We conducted our first lead free reflow trial in November 2005 after carefully selecting our solder paste partner. We have selected Senju Metals solder paste (supplied by Link Hamson in the UK) because of the excellent product and service they provide.
The Japanese Electronics Industry has been investigating lead free solders for over 20 years and has great expertise in this field. Most Japanese OEM’s have been producing lead free assembled products in mass production in Europe since the end of 2002. With this much first hand production experience of using lead free solder alloys combined with UK manufacture and service it seemed an obvious choice.
We have been producing RoHS Compliant assemblies since May 2005 for a major American Communications company. And have recently produced RoHS compliant product containing a 416 ball BGA.
This has obviously meant investment in new equipment and processes at Teddington Electronics. We have seen the need to purchase a Heller 1707EXL reflow oven to give us better control of the reflow process when using lead free alloys.
To aid with getting the perfect profile for each customers board we have also invested in a SlimKIC 2000 Profiler. This enables us to utilise the predictive software used in this profiler to take all of the guess work out of achieving a profile for any given PCB assembly regardless of the level of technology.
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