[sdiy] Future SYNTH-DIY

[Paul Higgins]

On Sunday, May 22, 2005, at 17:25 US/Central, Richard Wentk wrote:

> I thought the issue was landfill? A lot of electronics end up in 
> landfill, which is a polite way of saying that it's in a hell's 
> kitchen of all kinds of biochemical decay and corrosion. This is far 
> from a chemically inert environment, and the last thing anyone wants 
> is (e.g.) lead salts seeping into the water table.

And isn't the other big issue that a lot of the basically disposable 
electronics, or the PC boards anyway, are arriving in places like China 
and India to be melted down and then the industrial waste is just 
dumped into landfills?  They probably are using both 
industrial-strength acids as well as heat guns, etc. which generates 
lots of heavy-metal waste.  I'm sure that I read something recently 
about this in the news.

The only problem is that some of the metals that I've heard are being 
used in the lead-free solders include things like antimony and bismuth, 
which are highly toxic in their own right.  I haven't looked much into 
the lead-free stuff yet, as I still have a couple pounds of Kester "44" 
to use up.  So I'm not very current on what the lead-free alloys are.

>> That might help the hobbyist, but not the one who wants to do 
>> business.
>
> I think that's what I meant about the death of Synth DIY. This is a 
> major pain for hobbyists, but it's potentially lethal for small-scale 
> companies like Doepfer and Moog and the rest.

Can someone enlighten me on the compatibility problems between the old 
63/37 lead solder and the new lead-free parts?  I know that there are 
some significant issues with this.

TIA,
-PRH