[tinwhiskers] Re: [RoHSUSAPushback] Update on H.B. 2420
- From: "Bob Landman" <rlandman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <RoHSUSAPushback@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <Leadfree@xxxxxxx>, "tin whiskers forum" <tinwhiskers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:25:03 -0400
Colleagues:
This past week I attended a SMTA/IEEE joint meeting on lead free manufacturing.
The presenters statements, as well as those in attendance, except for myself a
few others, were sanguine about the reliability of lead free manufacturing
today. A statement was made by a reliability engineer with many years
experience that there was no reliability concerns now that lead has been
eliminated except perhaps for NASA space projects because ?most electronics has
a useful life of 3 years?. The agenda of the meeting: July_2009_SMTA-IEEE
joint_meeting - Hudson NH.pdf
Are you all prepared to toss the electronics you have purchased in 3-5 years
since the RoHS law came into effect? Willing to role the dice? What about
all the extremely expensive test equipment being purchased today (from Agilent,
Tektronix, Teradyne, etc..) It is all lead free now. Is there really nothing
to worry about?
Are you saying to yourself ?I doubt it will happen to me?? What convinced you?
Where?s the evidence? On what is your level of confidence based? Isn?t it so
that lead-free electronics is in its infancy? Hasn?t the literature made it
clear it takes years to show the failures (and they may be intermittent
failures which are very hard to find)?
How about that new car you just purchased that is loaded with electronics
(which includes pollution controls, air bag deployment and anti-lock brakes).
How about that rapid transit train you ride to work every day in that is
controlled by electronics? Did you see the pictures of the crash of the Wash
DC Metro a few weeks ago? That was blamed on a failure of the control system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/14rail.html WASHINGTON ? A single broken
part probably caused last month?s deadly train crash here, the National
Transportation Safety Boardhinted Monday, as it issued an urgent recommendation
to local and federal authorities to evaluate similar systems around the country
for ?adequate safety redundancy.?
More than ever before, technology is connected to our lives in a very intimate
way. Someone you know has a pacemaker. Cardiac pacemakers have failed due to
tin whiskers ? did you know that? The FDA recalled them -
2008-Brusse-Pacemaker Committee-Metal Whiskers.pdf
There have been many recent articles on the subject which clearly indicate that
tin whiskering is still a concern. Here are links to them so you can judge
for yourselves. (or do you not want to know, you want to maintain your
lead-free innocence?)
Several quotes come to mind as I reflected on what I was hearing that evening?
Mark Twain said ??It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's
what you know for sure that just ain't so.?
Louis Pasteur noted that ?In the fields of observation chance favors only the
prepared mind?.
1) APEX 09 Bare Board Material Performance after Pb-free Reflow
-presentation.pdf (excellent very detailed study of reliability of lead free pc
boards)
2) apex tin mitigation Lesniewski.pdf (suggestions on how to mitigate (not
eliminate) tin whiskering)
3) NASA_DoD LFE Project-June-24-2009_SN whisker tele.pdf (excellent
presentation by Kurt Kessel of NASA Kennedy on extended life testing of
lead-free mfg)
4) The Pb-free Manhattan project.pdf (why is this proposed $60M project
necessary?)
5) Borgesen_Lead_free_reliability.pdf (Borgeson notes here how one can be
deceived by the design of experiment into thinking all is well with lead free
mfg)
6) Developing a NASA Lead-Free Policy for Electroncs_Lessons Learned.pdf
7) Pb-free DoD brochure.pdf and DID for LFCP DI-MGMT-81772.doc (DOD
cautions to be aware of lead-free problems)
NASA also has quite a collection of articles at this link
http://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/
Bob Landman, President
Senior Member, IEEE
IEEE Power & Energy/Reliability Societies
H&L Instruments, LLC
www.hlinstruments.com
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