The professional audio gear that we all make a living with is about to fundamentally change forever. On July 1, 2006, the European Union directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substance, or RoHS, will take effect. This directive bans the use of certain hazardous substances in the manufacture or sale of electronics within the EU and will affect every aspect of how our gear is designed, constructed, sold, used and even repaired.

The RoHS directive and its closely related law known as the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) directive are part of a legislation initiative designed to reduce “e-waste” - the growing toxic heap of discarded technology clogging our landfills. RoHS specifically bans Lead (Pb), Cadmium (Cd), Mercury (Hg), Hexavalent Chromium (Cr6+), Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBB) and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE).

The most dramatic challenge will be the ban on lead – specifically, lead solder. The higher melting points of the lead-free solder require finding components able to withstand the higher temperature and, in some cases, retooling the entire manufacturing process.

These regulations are particularly difficult for the small to medium sized manufacturers that create products for our industry. PSC, Lectrosonics, and Zaxcom all say they'll be directly affected by RoHS.

“Circuit boards and their associated components have been soldered using tin-lead solder for more than 80 years,” says Ron Meyer, President of PSC. “Now these same assemblies must be soldered using tin-nickel and/or tin-nickel-copper based solders.  The drawback to these reformulated compounds is that they have much higher melting points than conventional tin-lead solder, do not flow out as smoothly and are susceptible to producing tin ‘whiskers’ that can cause short circuits.  In some cases, these new solder formulations require temperatures that are more than 125 degrees hotter than traditional solders.  This change in soldering temperature causes added stress to many electronic components, causing failure before the product is even finished.”

Bruce Jones, Lectrosonics’ VP of marketing concurs, adding, “The fundamental problem is the availability of parts that can withstand the higher temperatures of lead free solders…At the higher temps, many of the parts do not survive the trip through the surface mount ovens.”

Manufacturers are also having difficulty finding components that are RoHS compliant. “All components used in the assembly of the product must be lead-free,” says Meyer. “They may not have any tin-lead plated leads, wires, etc.  At this point in time, only a small portion of components are ‘lead-free’ which makes building electronic products rather difficult.  Finally, some specific components contain one or more of the other banned elements and thus cannot be used in a RoHS certified product.  In this case, we have had to redesign circuits using compliant components.”

Of course, redesigns of existing product takes away resources from R&D for new products and adds additional costs. As for future designs, Meyer comments, “When you know what the design parameters are from the start, then you just design your products with the RoHS initiative in mind.  Many of the newer products are now going to be more expensive to produce for some time to come, until everything is produced in this way. Lead was a very cheap element; nickel and copper and gold are much more expensive.” Jones adds that, “It is costing everyone a lot of time and money…Small companies who outsource PCB production will have to make the transition with new designs and inventory until everything is converted.  Large companies who have no choice but to convert or add production capacity for lead free have to spend lots of money on equipment, engineering and inventories.” Zaxcom’s Glenn Sanders is slightly more optimistic, speculating that RoHS initiatives might only add a maximum of 5% to the end users’ price.

Perhaps most disturbing is the possibility of decreased reliability of equipment during the transition. “At the present time, the lead free solders are more brittle than the tin/lead type, which may have some impact on reliability and ruggedness in the field,” says Jones. Meyer adds, “Many people are trying to use existing [surface mount wave soldering] equipment and this will result in cracked solder joints and intermittent failures.”

Lectrosonics’ immediate reaction to the problems of RoHS compliance is indeed very radical.  “In our case, we simply cannot justify the conversion at the present time and may be forced to forego sales in Europe until we can comply….The volume of product sold into Europe is only a small percentage of our total, so we cannot convert half of our production capacity to a lead free line to support a small percentage of sales.”

Of course, this can’t be a permanent solution for Lectrosonics, since China, Canada, and Taiwan have all announced similar legislation. In fact, the California state legislature has recently announced that they will enact their own version of RoHS which will go into effect on January 1, 2007.

There's no doubt that lead is a dangerous substance and that regulation can be extremely beneficial. Jamie Lincoln Kitman pointed out in "The Secret History of Lead" for The Nation that since the 1986 outlawing of lead as an automobile gasoline additive, the American public's mean blood-lead level is down more than 75 percent. However, the net benefits of RoHS in particular are questionable, especially in light of early exemptions gained by lobbies working on behalf of the transportation and computer industries. As Laura Turbini and Dennis Bernier write in The Handbook of Lead-Free Solder Technology for Microelectronic Assemblies:

New lead-free solders will not reduce the amount of the amount of lead ore that is mined, but will require an increased use of less available metals. The manufacturing process involved for electronic assembly will result in an increased energy usage and generation of increased scrap, both having a negative impact on the environment. Exploiting scarce resources to obtain solder alloys that may not be as reliable or environmentally-friendly as conventional tin-lead solder is a questionable solution.

“Will the world be a better place once we have made the transition?” reflects Lectrosonics’ Jones. “Perhaps.  But, as usual with bureaucracies, the original intent often goes by the wayside as politics and money become the primary focus. In my opinion, the economic impact in Europe is going to far outweigh the social and health benefits, and they may just push the deadline farther into the future.  We'll just have to wait and see.”

Thanks to Bruce Jones, Ron Meyer and Glenn Sanders for their participation in this article.