RoHS

[CaseyJones]

Yeah but... I still want inexpensive Sellier & Bellot buckshot from the Czech republic for my old shotgun. Then I can clean my guns and re-enact miniature battles with my toy soldiers... they're made of lead.

I gotta take a trip to Germany some time soon to see high dollar cars hoppin' around on the Autobahn. Wheel weights are made outta lead. O.k. so we'll worry about lead in the waste stream, I'l betcha I can walk around the block and pick half a dozen stray wheel weights off the road.

[Ron Worley]

Ive connections in the organic farms and gardens in my area...

BTW hilariously enough "organic chemistry" is often enough fuel chemistry, the study of hydrocarbon compounds...

Well, to be honest, it's not about carbon based fuels.. it's about carbon based life forms.... It's "Organic" because it deals with life based carbon / hydrogen / oxygen chemical reactions that are essential to the life forms that we understand. Yes, Petro-chemical materials are in the same vein- because they come from the decomposition of "organic" life forms. I took over 8 semesters of Chem in my degree....

Ron (BTW, BS, Biomedical Engineering)

[Andy Le Blanc]

lots of folks I know have issues with the metalurgical content of their rounds
specially round deer season.... theyll be more ..... the turkey population in Maine is exploding......

soil with the organic farmer is resource to conserved and maintained useing
natural systems without the introduction of "chemistry" or at least useing
naturaly occuring adjudicants... compost happens

now Ive had amps go pop when one barely visable copper strand or slight thread of something carbonizes and arcs.....
how will solder type effect overall longevity of a hand dressed amp?
maybe a lead free with a higher silver content ? might be the way...
solder technique becomes more critical
I've been in a couple military units from the late 50's.....
very clean... each join was painted..... and the whole unit coated with the
old anti-fungal-bug in the bush-shellac-stuff....

Are there any refferance materials or guidelines for the old
"mil. spec. standards" for solder technique or specifics for solder type
and applications

[CaseyJones]

its not that bad.... and not quite the point..... if your old enough you may remember.... heck the worries about the air in china for the olymipics is a good example..... that used to be the way it was here.... they only just lifted the safty restrictions on some of the rivers here in maine just to have contact with the water..... it takes time for an idea to be accepted...... im old enough to remember the whine and moan when they took the lead out of the gas....
in the long run RoHS and the like will be the norm....

I been around the block a few times. I was up in Maine in '72, I remember they used to float pulp wood to the mills back then. I bet that would piss the Greenies off now! Well the papermills are mostly gone and the sawmills are mostly gone. 'Course dioxin is a bi-product of paper production and the papermills had a hard time keepin' it outta the rivers, you and I both know they stink some, too. Is that big mill still in Rumney?

Next, lead in the gas. I remember that one, too. 'Course I still buy 100 octane race gas and run it in my old bikes. Tetraethyl lead is a fantastic upper cylinder lubricant. You don't want oil in yer upper cylinders because it smokes and fouls plugs. Lead is such a great lubricant you can get away with cast iron valve seats. Without lead the valves sink into the heads pretty quickly. The Feds took the lead out and we were stuck with old technology cast iron V8s with top ends that didn't last very long without the lead. Primarily they took the lead out because it ruins an expensive catalyst instantly so... kill two birds with one stone. No more roadside lead contamination and less smog. Didja every notice that the Greenie flag has the same symbol as late'60s and early '70s Honda bolt heads? True story, look at the bolts on an old Honda. Anyway the first attempts at cleaner greener cars here in the U.S. weren't all that hot, just take a heavy cast iron 6 liter pig with a carburetor, lean it out in an attempt to get it to clean up then stuff a cork up its ass by adding a catalyst. Performance-wise late '70s cars sucked, fuel economy wise they literally sucked. Stuff from Japan and Europe was much better because they were way ahead of us with fuel injection or better carburetors plus gas has always been expensive in Europe and Japan. Ultimately fuel injection won out because it's the only way to meter fuel with the requisite precision. By my reckoning "they" got it right by '92 depending on who you consider "they" to be. Well, "we" got it right by '92, German cars with Bosch injection would pass smog without a catalyst in '78.

My point? The rest of the world got with the program mandated by our own dumb-ass laws quicker than we did, it took us 20 years. I don't know what that proves. I do know that politicians aren't engineers. I know that when I was a kid I thought all the predators should be eliminated because they eat cute little rabbits. I know that if I'd had my way we'd be up to our eyeballs in rabbits by now.

[Andy Le Blanc]

yep.... the mill in Rumford is still in operation..... one of the few left
most of the mills are done..... closed...... walmarts are all that most can afford
I live closer to the Sappi outfit by Hinckley... and every now and again
when the winds right you can still smell the money.....
over in Livermore Falls.... used to be you'd come over the hill gettin
into town and hit the yellow air.... burn your eyes.... give you the taste of
strong cabage for the rest of the day
there was an old warehouse over in Fairfield\Waterville where the neiborhood
kids used to play in puddle of mercury..... NO JOKE..... they cleaned that one up only five or six years back.....

[FUCHSAUDIO]

RoHs only affects commercially made and commercially sold units, as far as I know. Unless you plan to build to sell these commercially, you're not obligated to RoHs compliance. It seems the world is heading that way, whether we like it or not......

[CaseyJones]

RoHs only affects commercially made and commercially sold units, as far as I know.

For now. Bureaucracy is a self sustaining organism that's very interested in its own proliferation, propagation and survival. On a cellular level you have individual bureaucrats who generate whatever whimsical or better yet capricious and arbitrary legislation they think suits the National Mood at any moment. If the individual cell is charismatic enough to convince additional cells of the value of its idea the idea becomes binding as law. The individual cell ideally was charismatic enough to get elected so charisma is a given. On the other end of the process you have cops of every stripe. The great thing about law is that if you write it correctly it can be a fantastic source of backdoor revenue. Then we have the Central Scrutinizer to enforce all the laws that haven't been written yet!

Seriously, all you need is one overzealous Customs agent to tag your I.D. and you're screwed no matter how big or small you are. What we'll do is spend bazillions of the taxpayer's dollars to enforce something that may have negligible impact whether it's enforced or not. Business constantly applies cost analysis to itself, that's how businesses stay in business. Government isn't compelled to turn a profit, good thing too because it's incapable of it. Government is the ultimate service economy, they set the prices (taxes) and they dictate exactly how much service they're willing to return (as little as possible IMHO). "They" pay themselves rawther handsomely, I guarantee the average bureaucrat gets better pay, better benefits, a better health care plan and a better retirement plan than I do. Good government would at least exercise reasonable care when spendin' our money but I guess that's an unreasonable expectation on my part. Good government should be capable of balancing economic, social and environmental needs among other things. Imbalance means someone somewhere is gonna suffer.

Remember folks, the name of the game is Value Added. If you spend all day shufflin' papers from yer "in" box to yer "out" box (so to speak) you've pissed away an entire day and produced nothing.

SO RoHS in theory is value-added becuase it promotes a cleaner and greener environment. Tell that to the little guy in Pakistan who makes his livin' shavin' ICs offa circuit boards with a chisel. Tell that to the kids who make a livin' pickin' whatever they can off a dump in the Phillipines. I guess less lead in their dump improves their lives slightly. One would hope...

[FUCHSAUDIO]

Casey: It's sounds like the whole Ethanol fiasco:

We're now seeing massive increases in the cost of food, as we're stuffing this junk into our gas tanks. The looming catastrophe is the realization that by time we've refined it, shipped in on trucks to gas stations (oh, sorry, using dirty Diesel trucks, because you can't pipe it...), and we deforest Brazil (and other places) which destroys trees that are naturally producing oxygen from CO2. We're still getting hosed by oil companies, Iraq is making billions on the inflated costs of oil (then why is the US still sending them tons of money ?), and it doesn't make our cars run any better anyway.

The impact on world hunger will be even worse than the average guy who cannot afford a $ 6.00 lof of bread or a stinkin' beer, since the costs of corn, wheat and grain have gone through the roof. Maybe we should use tobacco instead ? Nah, that's making the government more dirty money, whil killing people.

Don't get me started.

[CaseyJones]

We're still getting hosed by oil companies, Iraq is making billions on the inflated costs of oil (then why is the US still sending them tons of money ?), and it doesn't make our cars run any better anyway.

The actual numbers: Iraq is bankin' a $5 billion per month surplus while we stuff more money into the "war effort".

The piece of modern history they don't teach the kiddies: The breakup of the Soviet Union was due in a large part to the waste of capital maintaining a Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Pop quiz: What was the first venue for The War on Terror? What's that sayin', "Those who ignore history..."

The impact on world hunger will be even worse than the average guy who cannot afford a $ 6.00 lof of bread or a stinkin' beer, since the costs of corn, wheat and grain have gone through the roof. Maybe we should use tobacco instead ? Nah, that's making the government more dirty money, whil killing people.

Don't get me started.

Casey the Crackpot... meet Andy the Anarchist!

Pleased to meet ya!

[6G6]

Among the things I sometimes need to repair at work, are a few French devices.
They use lead free solder.
Once you replace whatever died, ususally transistors, the next step is to get a good solder sucker and remove as much of that crap as possible.
Once they are repaired and have real solder they can function just fine for a long time.
Otherwise, you'll spend forever looking for bad solder joints that look just fine.
It seems to be brittle and isn't happy about trying to reflow it.

[FUCHSAUDIO]

My new nick-name !! lol.



Hydrogen or electric man...... http://www.teslamotors.com/

[Andy Le Blanc]

how small of an outfit can be considerd as exempt?
or does it only apply to an "incorporated" business?
still tons of questions
practical repairs with leadfree is important.... is it really that bad
I can see trying to fix wave solderd boards as being painfull
but a larger joins? what flux?

the handle of "hydrogen" might imply that your gas'y

I dont think that anyone with a brain larger than a walnut likes the current
corporate\economic structures unless you have access to capital and a good understanding of how to use it.....
Id love a big loan and a clear path
towards growth..... but I dont see it either...... American consumer culture
seems to have de-evolved into a cleverly managed system of forced dependance.....
if you stand up to be selfsuficeint the odds are youll end up
being the old guy at the front door of a wallmart.... never knowing just how much is wagered on how soon your gonna kick the bucket...

[CaseyJones]

I can see trying to fix wave solderd boards as being painfull
but a larger joins? what flux?

The problem as I see it is that we're using what could be considered obsolete processes and obsolete technology. It's probably similar to the hot rod movement, computerized smog controls were supposed to be the death of hot rodding. The other side of the coin is that it's possible via internet to scrounge enough parts to build a deeply authentic lakes roadster complete with flathead V8 no matter where you live. A '32 Ford ducks the law because it's grandfathered even if it's a recently built replica. The difference is that the vintage technology we employ is or will be banned. Yes we can mutate and survive but mind you this market insists on the "correct" vintage circuit board material, the "correct" flea clips, resistors, capacitors, tubes, sockets, wire... work your way down the list... it's supposed to be what it's supposed to be. Change the materials and construction methods and it's no longer what it's supposed to be. It's like banning maple and spruce then tryin' to build a violin.

American consumer culture
seems to have de-evolved into a cleverly managed system of forced dependance.....

DAMN that's poetic! So what part of our culture isn't "consumer" culture?

"Devolved"... it makes me want to dig out my orange jumpsuit and wear a red plastic flower pot on my head!

[ampdork]

"Devolved"... it makes me want to dig out my orange jumpsuit and wear a red plastic flower pot on my head!

Are we not men!?

[Andy Le Blanc]

the correct vintage.... the correct part..... the correct materials.....

from the worlds of anitques and the craft trades comes a couple quips I've learned.

the first:

"There are far more antiques bought and sold every year than were ever made"

the second:

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of the simple mind"

Now... this being said.... you are correct.....

but I also think that there is room in this for very old designs made with available parts...
not a some take or modern re-creation ....

there will be... a niche for caps that are specific to say the years xyz of fender the exact aged trannies for marshals and traynors....
Ive played vintage gear that sounded exactly the way that type and year and style and tone was.... but it becomes a collectors market very quickly and is not accessible.... every player asks "why can't I find that tone" and becomes a market victim... drowning in product features.... knobs that turn by them selves..... programable doo-doo..... digital vomit.... only to face the unaffordable....

why would a hand built amp that reflects modern consern (RoHS)
be any less correct.....