RoHS Readiness: More than Materials Documentation

"The industry is racing against the clock to meet the requirements of European legislation, called the Requirements of Hazardous Substances (RoHS), that will go into effect on July 1, 2006. The legislation will ban several substances including lead and lead bearing solder. In addition, California�s laws, mirroring RoHS legislation, take effect in early 2007, while China has recently passed similar legislation. Critical lead free issues include new alloys and material evaluations, inspection changes, tin whiskers, lead free on advanced packages, like chip scale and flip chip, and reliability. Assembly operations will face increased assembly costs, perhaps 15% higher, and will be impacted in areas beyond manufacturing, such as field support, sales, marketing and training." Source: reed-electronics.com