The Tin-Whisker Menace

An anonymous reader writes "Fortune has an article about how the recent environmental push to completely eliminate lead from electronic components and wiring may eventually lead to the next Y2K problem of slowly-growing tin whiskers short-circuiting equipment.""

Comments

No

[Sycraft-fu]

All other factors aside, the reason that Y2K would have been the problem that some alleged is that all the failures would happen at the same time. If something fails, even something major like a powerplant, it's a problem not a catastrophe. It would only be a catastrophe if lots of tem, or worse yet all of them, failed at the same time.

So supposing this problem is as stated, it'll just lead to higher failure rates of electronics. That's not a catastrophe, just something we'll have to deal with, either by changing the methods used or simply by increasing the rate at which we replace devices.

Re:It's those idiot greens again

[Space Coyote]

Yeah, they'll have to replace some electronic equipment now and then, perhaps. And all because they don't want to poison themselves with lead. Silly Europeans.

But you go, USA, put lead back in everything, just to be the rugged individualists you are and show the rest of the world.

Hell, do you think Ancient Rome would have taken any crap from anyone else criticizing them for their lead pots? Exactly. USA! USA!

sealant

[confusion]

Surely a bath in some sort of sealant post production would eliminate this problem? Finding a way not to seal up the connection points would be a challenge, though.

Then again, this problem doesn't work out so bad for the hardware manufacturers, now does it?

Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/

Re:sealant

[PornMaster]

I think you'd also have to consider things like the heat-insulating properties of the sealants. That whole law-of-unintended-consequences thing. Would suck to solve the tin whiskers problem, but have your CPU fail because of overheating.

nope, greens are still idiots.

[dfenstrate]

Yeah, how did humanity ever survive the dark ages of the early 1900's when we didn't have some fucking nanny-state telling us not to use something we shouldn't eat in components we won't eat, or eat off of?

When was the last time you were served a meal on an old motherboard, or had IC's for an appetizer? Maybe you've used an old heatsink as a lollipop?

Re:nope, greens are still idiots.

[dougmc]

Yeah, how did humanity ever survive the dark ages of the early 1900's when we didn't have some fucking nanny-state telling us not to use something ...

To be fair, the average life expectancy back then (1901) was like 49 years. Now it's 77 years (in the US, anyways)..

Granted, much of the increase is due to better medical care, but much of it's due to knowing things about hygene and the like that we didn't know back then. At one point, plates and the like had lots of lead in them, and people ingested lots of lead from this and it caused them to live shorter lives.

But now that I know about the tin whiskers, I want lead in my electronic circuits! I wonder which is worse for the environment -- a stereo with no lead that gets thrown in the landfill after breaking after 10 years, or a stereo with some lead in it that lasts 20 years before breaking and getting thrown away ...

Let's talk reality here

[Sycraft-fu]

The lead in solder accounts for a very, VERY tiny percentage of the lead we use and dispose of. It's a really stupid thing to be targeting since there are much bigger problems. It's like worrying about a basket of dirty laundry when your entire floor is covered in garbage. You aren't fixing a problem worth solving.

Now these tin whiskers aside, this sucks for people who like ot do electronics work at home. The only solder blends that are easy to work with contain lead. A 63/37 Sn/Pb or 62/36/2 Sn/Pb/Ag blend is what you need for a low melting point and nice, clean, easy application. The non-lead solders are much harder to work with since they need much higher temperatures. Easy to burn out a component if you aren't careful.

Now compare the amount of lead I use to make an electronic device (like 25-30% of a tube the size of my pinky, that's less than 40% lead and wound such as to use less than 30% of the space in the tube) to a lead-acid car battery, which all cars have and are replaced about once every 5 years.

The no lead in circuts is a wonderful example of environmentalists going after a non issue and fucking things up for people. Yes, lead is a problem, it can contaminate water tables and lead poisoning is NASTY. However the small amount of lead used on PCBs is NOT the problem, and getting rid of it just creats MORE waste by creating electronics that die faster.

Re:Let's talk reality here

[fermion]

I am a reasonable well off white person is not really concerned about the things that the bleeding heart liberals complain about. Even though I have worked in manufacturing, i was mostly in a clean office while the poor white and minorities were the ones exposed to the chemicals, albeit in small doses that were likely not harmful, even after many years. I never had to live next to the factories that dumped the chemicals into my drinking water, even though the levels were probably dilute enough not to matter. If I worked with dangerous chemicals, i did so in a lab environment where there were no production issues forcing me to cut corners that might risk my health. I used chemical in personal quantities, and was seldom if ever exposed to the industrial quantities that many poor white and minorities are exposed to.

As such it makes little sense for me to suffer the mild aggravation of having to use lead free solder, or acetone instead of trichloroethylene, or perhaps, god forbid, drive a car that get better than 20 miles to the gallon. After all I have air conditioning so I do not have to breathe the air. I have water filtration so I do not have to drink straight tap water. My kids have clean play grounds to they do not get exposed to the toxic sludge in that the poor kids play in.

In fact there is no reason why i should not just starting getting into the American spirit and get an obedient wife, some servants, and watch my property cut down the sugar cane. Why we ever gave poor and colored people any power at all is a mystery to me. Fortunately our president and congress will fix that mistake.

Re:Why are they mentioning Y2K?

[fozzmeister]

because there is a lifetime for every component, it would be reasonable to expect a reasonably static rate of growth of tin wiskers, and it will therefore prolly take a set amount of time for them to grow between components and short (at least in particular types of products.

Forinstance if AMD started manufacturing the AMD64 3200+ and got the substitues wrong, they would all start failing at rougly the same time, taking down all computers that are built using them.

It's not such a date of failure but the inference is they will prolly all fail at similar times

Re:It's those idiot greens again

[lgw]

Well, yes, that's obvious isn't it? Billions of dollars in research, and no one thought of that?

The problem is: no one understands quite why lead prevents tin whisker formation, so it's hard to find a replacement that you *know* works. Texas Insrtuments has ten years of development on this, and has a solution that "looks good"; evryone else is behind that. Lead alloys have a 50 year track record, however, and the new apporaches just don't have the field data yet.

In order to fix a very small part of the lead problem, any electronics you buy going forward have a non-trivial risk of suddenly failing a few years down the road. Including life-critical equipment.

How many lives saved by eliminating a very small percentage of environmental lead? (Lead in electronics is tightly bound; no evidence that is can get into the water table.) How many lives lost due to sudden system failure? What bothers me is: no one making these laws cares about such analysis.

Re:It's those idiot greens again

[harrkev]

Have you ever seen inside a typical chip? The die is bonded to a ceramic carrier, and wires are then bonded to the chip. And those wires are also "pretty damn this." So, thickness is not really an issue here. If a whisker can handle 1mA, that is enough to screw up a signal line.

And for what it's worth, I have a MSEE and design digital electronics for a living.

Yes, it is.

[MarcQuadra]

Hey there, there's a HUGE difference between pipes made out of lead and a bit of solder with lead in it.

Lead isn't a death-sentence, it can be safely used. I've been drinking from lead pipes and living in lead-painted walls my whole life and never shown elevated levels. My dad is a lead inspector and he says that virtually all the lead poisoning cases are caused by lead paint dust and chips, kids get the dust on their hands and toys and it ends up in their blood.

This sort of demonizing really pisses me off, some of the best materials we had for common uses has been outlawed because of irresponsible use and disposal. Asbestos insulation, lead solder, and asbestos brake pads are all superior at what they do. Hell, my heating bill (gas, in Boston) is about 30% of most of my coworkers because my house is jacketed in asbestos, and as long as I don't fsck with it it's perfectly safe.

Ever notice how often you have to replace brake pads these days? Or how much rusty dust they drop on your rims? That wasn't a problem with asbestos brake pads, they were awesome. I'm still looking to see if I can get my hands on some from overseas (I'll replace them myself or tell my mechanic before he services them).

Lead solder is a dream to work with compared to other materials, it's cheaper, and it lasts much longer. Outlawing it because people illegally dispose lead-containing stuff in landfills is moronic at best.