The last meeting followed on closely from the dual announcements that the DTI proposals for minimum ROHS levels were rejected at the last TAC meeting and that the WEEE legislation has also been delayed due to issues concerning the proposed clearing house. Thus suppliers and manufacturers still do not have definite guidelines to enable them to decide compliance and ensure processes are in place in time for the legislation go-live date.

Featured guests at the meeting this time were from ST Semiconductors and Harting Components. Both speakers explained the issues that they had had to consider in adapting their products in order to ensure compliance with the ROHS legislation, whilst maintaining the product´s usability and performance for the customer. We were advised that ST products are free of all ROHS materials apart from lead, but they anticipate having replaced this by the end of 2004. The ST products will function as before except that process temperatures will need to be increased by 20°C. Further application data relating to ST products is available on the ST website, as is a list of ALL chemicals that are used in their products. The ST website will include a database of products where users can enter current product codes and be advised of the lead-free equivalent codes and their availability. The compliant products will be identified by the ‘Ecopack’ label on boxes and where space allows; the product itself will be identified with an ‘E’.

Alan Lund of RS also provided the latest information from the DTi re: NiCad batteries within equipment. It would seem that where these are soldered to components, they will not be considered under ROHS legislation, this would appear to contradict earlier indications, but means that all batteries will only have the ‘Battery Directive’ applied to them.

Harting advised that like ST, most of their parts are free of ROHS banned substances apart from lead, (80% of connectors are already compliant). They have carried out comprehensive research into finding a suitable substitute material, but due to the ‘Tin Whiskers’ phenomenon, they have decided to make use of gold plated terminals in their connector parts as this is the only way they can guarantee that their parts will be free of this problem. On solderless terminations, i.e. crimps, they will use nickel plating. All their parts will be ‘backward compatible’ and available from the 1st January 2005. They will after this time only supply compliant products as their machines will have to be modified for the new plating processes.