Vintage Synth Repair

>My Son tells me that his firm is instruction not use lead free solder on ANY
>military contracts. Enough said???
>

I expect this is to do with microelectronics rather than people's 
health. Lead solder has Uranium naturally present in tiny amounts. The 
ionising radiation from this can cause occasional errors in today's 
sub-micron digital chips. Lead free does not have this problem.

No - RoSH - Restriction of Hazardous Substances. New electronics
things may not use certain things that are hazardous, poisonous,
difficult to recycle, etc.

See: http://www.rohs.gov.uk/

On 1/31/07, Matt Nolan <matt@...> wrote:
>
> >My Son tells me that his firm is instruction not use lead free solder on ANY
> >military contracts. Enough said???
> >
>
> I expect this is to do with microelectronics rather than people's
> health.

Sorry Matt, I think you mis understood.  His firm's instruction is not to
use lead free solder. In other words the instruction is to use lead/tin
solder on all military contracts.   However I was interested to read about
Uranium being present in Lead/tin solder.    Best regards John.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Nolan" <matt@...>
To: <vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 10:41 AM
Subject: [vintagesynthrepair] Re: Lead-free solder


>
> >My Son tells me that his firm is instruction not use lead free solder on
ANY

> >military contracts. Enough said???
> >
>
> I expect this is to do with microelectronics rather than people's
> health. Lead solder has Uranium naturally present in tiny amounts. The
> ionising radiation from this can cause occasional errors in today's
> sub-micron digital chips. Lead free does not have this problem.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com wrote:

>Sorry Matt, I think you mis understood.  His firm's instruction is not to
>use lead free solder. In other words the instruction is to use lead/tin
>solder on all military contracts.   However I was interested to read about
>Uranium being present in Lead/tin solder.    Best regards John.
>

Ha! Yes - that will teach me to skim read.

Yeah, the Uranium thing. I work for a company designing massively 
parallel multiprocessor chips. The BGA packages we use for our devices 
have lead-free balls. Once you go below a certain transistor minimum 
feature size, the radiation strike risk becomes much more appreciable.

Regards,
Matt.