RoHS Compliance

RoHS Compliance: Think You’re Exempt?
Find out how it impacts your business, services, and PCB Assembly.

The RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive stipulates that electrical and electronic products destined for sale in Europe must be free of six hazardous substances by July 1, 2006. This initiative impacts many electronic manufacturing processes like PCB Design and PCB Assembly. The six substances identified by RoHS are Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Hexavalent Chromium, PBBs, and PBDEs.

With the compliance deadline drawing near, companies that manufacture, rebrand, or import electrical or electronic equipment destined for Europe must take action immediately to review existing products, new product designs, and manufacturing processes like PCB Assembly, and bring them into compliance with RoHS requirements. Although the burden of RoHS compliance lies with the producer, RoHS affects the entire supply chain. Suppliers will play a key role in supporting your efforts to achieve compliance for all products by July 1, 2006.

Think Your Company is Exempt from RoHS and WEEE Directives?
You may not think your business falls under the RoHS directive and are planning to keep your products leaded. The electronics supply chain, unfortunately, may have other ideas.

The industries that will be impacted are extensive. However, your company may fall outside these industries or your production does not go to the European Market Place.

So why should you worry?

Although the European Union has implemented the directive, a number of states in the United States have mandated green initiatives of their own. It will not be long before these initiatives to encompass the entire US. The length of time for these initiatives to impact your product is unknown.

So why worry today?

The following chart shows the six substances that are banned by RoHS Directive. Lead is the most significant substance in the electronics industry because the majority of components have lead as part of their makeup. The solder used in the assembly of these components to the printed circuit board is composed of lead.

Substances Covered by RoHS

*Exempt under RoHS

Component Manufacturers are moving at an accelerated pace to make their parts to lead-free. Those manufacturers may in the short term supply leaded components, but many are making plans to eliminate the leaded versions of their products.

If Leaded Parts Are Available
The electronics supply chain will dictate your future. If the leaded components remain in supply by the manufacturers it will not be long before the shrinking demand drives up prices and extends lead times due to priority of running lead-free parts. Obsolescence will occur. It is only a matter of time.

If leaded components remain available, you should expect:

• Higher prices as demand shrinks
• Longer lead times as priorities shift
• Uncertainty as obsolescence looms
  

If Leaded Components Become Obsolete
If the leaded components become obsolete and substitutes are available, the design community will be under pressure to initiate change orders to process the substitute in a timely fashion and engineering time maybe required to qualify the substitute.

If the leaded components become obsolete, you should expect:

• Substitute qualification
• Significant change order processing
• High pressure on the design community

If Leaded Components Become Obsolete and No Substitutes Are Available
If the leaded components are obsolete and substitutes are not available, your company will face decisions about the product’s future. Should it be decided to continue with the product, the design community will be under pressure to redesign the circuitry with a new available part. It is not likely that the redesign would result in the change to lead-free to eliminate the need to redesign again when another leaded part becomes obsolete.

If leaded components become obsolete and substitutes not available, you should expect:

• Product obsolescence decisions
• Redesign in a critical time mode
• High pressure on the design community

What About BGA’s?
Today we are experiencing component manufacturers changing their BGA products to lead-free and subsequently not offering leaded options. If the decision is made not to change all product components to lead-free, then at a minimum the printed circuit board will need to be changed to lead-free due to the BGA. The product will go through a leaded process for all other components. The BGA will need to be added in a rework station manually.

If BGA conversion to lead-free is required without a leaded version available, you should expect:

• Costly two process assembly
• PCBs and their assembly will need to be changed to lead-free
• BGA’s will require manual assembly
• Quality will suffer due to manual assembly

What Should We Do?

First Steps: Get a Plan
MEC can provide the resources to verify printed circuit board (PCB) Bills of Material for component compliance at reasonable cost. MEC will provide a plan to get your product ready to meet RoHS.

MEC can provide a report that breaks down each component:

• stating whether it is or is not in compliance
• providing a new part number of compliant components or the date the manufacturer has declared component is in compliance
• identifying alternative manufacturers and part numbers of compliant components should the original manufacturer not offer a compliant component
• or stating if no compliant component exists should no compliant component exist, MEC will provide alternative solutions to bringing the product into compliance

Leadtime for RoHS components may create deadline issues. Changeover to RoHS components may create obsolescence issues that will have to be managed. Should a component be discontinued by the manufacturer with no form, fit, or function compatible substitute available, a circuit design change will be necessary.

First Steps: Review PCB Impact. How will PCB Design and PCB Assembly processes change?
Changes in the manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCB) to eliminate lead processes will mean higher costs. Depending on the substituted components, changes to the printed circuit board to accommodate a different pad stack may be necessary. Changes to the printed circuit board (PCB) design and assembly will necessarily result in retooling costs for the board.

The PCB change may impact or require:

• The price of the PCB material
• PCB Layout changes to accommodate component pad needs
• PCB Tooling costs due to board layout change
• Circuit redesign due to discontinuance of part

Your ability to become RoHS-compliant depends on the quality of support available to you. MEC has the knowledge and resources to provide the total support you need. For additional information about the RoHS Directive and MEC compliance solutions, ask your MEC representative or contact us at the numbers listed below below.

MEC Innovation
5855 North Glen Park Road, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53209
414-228-5000 TEL 414-228-5001 FAX
www.MECInnovation.com

MEC Midwest/MEC Innovation Milwaukee, Wisconsin Tel (414) 228-5000 Toll-free (877) 632 4863

MEC Northwest Canby, Oregon Tel (503) 263-7300

MEC Southwest Tecate, Mexico Tel (619) 446-6350

Screaming Circuits Canby, Oregon Tel (866) 784-5887

sales@meccompanies.com

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