Drive convergence of Pb-free alloys
Develop an industry-standard assessment methodology
Establish performance guidelines
Update standards
Identify and differentiate alloys
“The industry’s experience with Pb-free processing is still in its infancy and there is much to be learned,” said Jim McElroy, CEO of iNEMI. “It is inevitable that industry will continue to innovate and will develop new solder formulations and fluxes as our experience with Pb-free grows. However, the use of multiple alloys poses several challenges in the manufacturing process and industry needs some way to manage these challenges and limit their impact.”
iNEMI members supporting these recommendations include: Agilent Technologies, Celestica, Cisco, Delphi Electronics & Safety, Flextronics International, Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation, Jabil Circuit, Motorola, Plexus Corp., Sanmina-SCI, Sun Microsystems and Texas Instruments.
“Managing the lead-free solder alloy alternatives is a complex yet critical issue to the industry, and it is imperative for the global industry to take a methodical and holistic approach, balancing the need for innovation and considerations for cost, performance, processes and logistics, as well as standardization,” said Dr. Dongkai Shangguan, Vice President of Technology for Flextronics, Chair of the iNEMI Board Assembly Roadmap and Coordinator of the EMS Forum.
“Optimizing the reliability of SAC solder joints without creating a multitude of component-centric solutions is important to Intel,” said Martin Rausch, General Manager, SMTD, Intel Corporation.
“We are looking to iNEMI’s Pb-Free Alloy Alternatives Project to address this topic because this issue can more effectively be addressed by the industry as a whole rather than on a company-by-company basis.” The iNEMI recommendations are available at
http://thor.inemi.org/webdownload/projects/ba/Pb-Free_Alloys/Alloy_recs.pdf
EPP Europe 451
