Due to legislation put forth by European Union (EU) and Asian governments, electronics manufacturers are now contending with a conversion to lead-free solder electronics manufacturing. The EU legislation went into effect in July 2006. Lead-free manufacturing has become the newest technology driver in electronics manufacturing.

While the binding EU and Asian legislation are directed toward the commercial electronics industry, it is inevitable that military and aerospace hardware will be manufactured with lead-free solders in the future due to the small percentage of the electronics industry (1 to 2 per cent) that is represented by military equipment. The EMPF is continuing to work with military hardware manufacturers and government agencies to identify and mitigate risks associated with the mandated lead-free manufacturing.

The EMPF has been involved in Lead-free electronics for many years. Since the late-1990s the Department of Defense (DoD) has been concerned with the long term reliability of new lead-free electronic hardware. Thermo-mechanical modeling of the visco-elastic properties of lead-free solders including creep fatigue, elastic and plastic strain, thermal expansion, elastic modulus, and stress relaxation, are critical details in the extrapolation of performance for a given set of environmental conditions. Presently, the ability to predict reliability solely on lead-free material attributes and behavior is not sufficient to warrant confidence in a result without verification of the mode of failure and the trigger mechanism responsible for the effect. Engineers must understand the differences between the common lead-free solder alloy systems and the tin-lead system. Production of high reliability electronics relies on the combination of an understanding of lead-free materials systems, implementation of standardized production processes, and establishment of a quality control system based lead-free materials.

In 1998-2000 the EMPF developed and began to teach a 2-day Lead-Free Electronics Training course in anticipation of the need for both government and industry to understand and deal with the critical ramifications of using lead-free electronic hardware in AHR (Avionics and High Reliability) systems. The need for this training became critical in July 2006, when the premiere piece of legislation, the European Union RoHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substances) went into effect, banning any electronics hardware from European markets. The EMPF course (and its custom analogs), upgraded continuously over the years, has graduated nearly 500 students from both the private and public electronics manufacturing sectors. Continuous upgrades of this course were facilitated by the high importance attached to this subject in concert with the center’s Navy ManTech mission.

The EMPF course, titled “Lead-Free Manufacturing” consists of two half-days of lectures on the subjects associated with lead-free electronics and two half-days of hands-on exercises in surface mount component reflow soldering, wave soldering, rework, and repair of actual lead-free electronic assemblies. Participants in this course will gain an understanding on the technical and legislative issues surrounding the implementation of lead-free solders in an electronics manufacturing environment. The student will acquire the technical insight necessary to ascertain the reasons behind the selection of components, alloys, substrates, finishes, design, and environmental tests to achieve reliability in lead-free assemblies. The engineer will gain an understanding of facilitating the preventative measures necessary to retain DoD critical mission compliancy for electronic assemblies. All of the standard courses listed in the EMPF course schedule are administered in Philadelphia, but can be taught at any suitable location for in-house training if desired.

This central position of the EMPF in the RoHS lead-free electronics government/industry implementation ensures that updates to the EMPF lead-free training course are timely and authoritative. The EMPF has also been instrumental to the offering of a lead-free electronics workshop in concert with the Defense Microelectronic Activity (DMEA) and several other ELF IPT (Executive Lead Free Integrated Process Team) members for DoD Program Managers. This workshop clearly outlines the role of the GEIA (Government Electronics and Information Technology Association) Lead-Free Standards documents in the implementation of the proposed DoD policy and acquisition strategy. The workshop is slated by the DMEA to become a Continuous Learning Module within the Defense Acquisition University.