Compliance with the RoHS Directive is essential to Wakefield’s ability to continue to do business with European Union customers after 1 July 2006.
RoHs Compliance Initiative (EU RoHS Directive, 2002/95/EC)
The RoHS Directive requires that from 1 July 2006, new electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) put on the market does not contain lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) or polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE). The directive provides specific exemptions if elimination or substitution of any of these six substances is technically or scientifically impracticable, or where environmental, health and / or consumer safety is negatively impacted.
Wakefield Thermal Solutions aims to minimize the environmental impacts by systematically considering environmental issues in product design. The mandatory environmental requirements described in this document are based on Wakefield’s environmental goal areas (e.g. environmentally relevant substances) and partly legislative requirements (such as but not limited to directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the council of 27 January 2003 on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment (“RoHS”) and Directive 2002/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 January 2003 on waste electrical and electronic equipment (“WEEE”) .
All products supplied by Wakefield Thermal Solutions shall be compliant with the following Substance List :
Maximum concentration values of the RoHS restricted substances are :
- Mercury : 0.1% by weight 1000 ppm
- Cadmium : 0.01% by weight 100 ppm
- Lead : 0.1% by weight 1000 ppm
- Chromium (Vl) : 0.1% by weight 1000 ppm
- PBB : 0.1% by weight 1000 ppm
- PBDE : 0.1 % by weight 1000 ppm
The general Wakefield plan with regard to RoHS is as follows: all RoHS noncompliant products will have alternatives available with RoHS-compliant materials on or before 1 July 2006. In some cases the noncompliant version may be phased out entirely. Also, as of 1 January 2005 all custom products designed by Wakefield for OEM customers, as well as new standard catalog products, will be RoHS compliant.
The following information is for reference only, but may be helpful for the customer to determine RoHS compliance of current Wakefield standard products. For the current Wakefield standard product line (as of 24 May 2005), the primary instances of RoHS restricted substances are:
- Lead (Pb) in plating of solderable tabs of board-level heat sinks for low-power devices (e.g. 657 series, 240 series). Wakefield has selected a RoHS-compliant plating system that has wide industry acceptance.
- Heat sinks with chromate (Cr+6) conversion coatings (e.g., 662 series). Wakefield Thermal Solutions offers a clear chemical film on our aluminum products that forms a conversion coating without the use of hexavalent chromium (Cr+6). We understand this finish complies with current RoHS and ELV European Directives. It provides excellent corrosion protection typical of requirements for MIL-C-5541E and ASTM B 449 Class 3, and MIL-DTL-81706 when employing ASTM B 117 salt fog method to168 hrs. This chemical film can also be used as a primer for paint.
- Thermal interface tapes containing PBDE that are offered as standard options. The tapes indicated by the suffixes -T1 and -T4 are the only noncompliant standard options that Wakefield supplies. Recently introduced replacements are the -T1E and the -T4E, respectively.
The size and configuration of Wakefield’s solderable components do not allow for direct labeling of individual parts as lead-free or RoHS-compliant. However, Wakefield intends to implement the JESD97 standard for labeling the component packaging with the appropriate lead-free symbols. The target date for the new labeling system to be in place is 31 January 2006.