RoHS nonsense, was: Desoldering Chips, was Re: Can someone,

N0body H0me wrote: The icing on the cake are all these leadless IC packages -- BGA and CSP mainly. In traditional leaded packages, any stresses on the chip (like you might see from the differences in thermal expansion coefficients between the PCB and the chip package) are generally absorbed by bending in the leads. With BGAs, you don't have leads, so after a couple of thermal shifts most of the solder joints will have sheared off the board. Couple that with solder that has basically no ductility (read: it doesn't bend, it breaks -- SnPb bends, many of the new breed of RoHS compliant solders tend to snap into pieces), and you've got a recipe for disaster. I can see a huge spike in the amount of electroscrap sent off for disposal: solder failures and so on. You can argue that the lack of lead makes it "safer", but there are still other things in the plastic cases and PCBs that -- AIUI -- are much more harmful than the lead in the solder. Fact is, the Eurocrats decided they needed to look like they were doing something, so they passed an ill-thought-out monstrosity of a law... Note all the exemptions: military, aviation, some automotive systems (I seem to recall reading something about JCB getting an exemption for hydraulic control and engine management electronics in diggers -- fair game to them). </politicalRantMode> -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/