iNEMI Recommends Approaches for Managing Lead Free Alloy Alternatives

The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI), an industry-led consortium focused on identifying and closing technology gaps, has outlined a set of recommendations to help the electronics industry manage lead free alloy alternatives. iNEMI said its recommendations support the guidelines developed by the EMS Forum to address these same issues.

Although SAC 305/405 have been the most commonly used lead free alloys to date, they do not meet all of industry’s needs for all applications, and new alloy solutions continue to be introduced. iNEMI recommends the following to help manufacturers manage the use of multiple solder alloys:

Drive convergence of lead free alloys

Develop an industry-standard assessment methodology

Establish performance guidelines

Update standards

Identify and differentiate alloys

“The industry’s experience with lead 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 lead 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 Lead 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.”

“While there are generally very good reasons to move to alternate lead-free alloys — both at the component level and in printed circuit assembly — the potential impact on manufacturing processes can be quite severe,” said Peter Tomaiuolo, Director, Corporate Technology, Celestica. “It is critical that customers, manufacturers and suppliers have an open dialogue in order to fully understand these impacts, so that the quality and reliability of the end product is not compromised.”

The iNEMI recommendations are available at http://thor.inemi.org/webdownload/projects/ba/Pb-Free_Alloys/Alloy_recs.pdf

www.inemi.org