MOTM

Some of you that are on the Oakley mailing list have seen Tony's recent 
announcement that he is selling off all the current stock of modules and ceasing 
production. This is based on 2 things: economics and RoHS compliance (which 
takes effect July 1 2006).

For those of you not familiar with RoHS....in a nutshell it's the restriction of 
importing electronics that contain "harmful" stuff, and lead is one of them.

MOTM has lead in 3 'areas': the pc board, the components and the solder itself.

PCB - the pc boards are 'coated' with a very thin layer of tin-lead solder (over 
the copper traces). So, to be RoHS compliant, you can do 1 of 2 things: use 
gold-plating or use a form of tin. I am in the process of getting quotes for 
both to see what the impact is. Gold "flashing" has been around 30 years, that's 
no big deal except gold plating itself is a *butt nasty* operation and many pc 
board suppliers charge accordingly. There are several tin-based pcb 
technologies, but some of them have a definite 'shelf-life' (there is a finite 
time from when you unseal the boards to soldering, like say 2 weeks).

COMPONENTS - Currently, 99% of the MOTM parts that are on the pc board contain 
lead in some form or another, mainly in the solder-coating of IC leads and the 
wires on the resistors/caps. It remains to be seen what through-hole parts that 
*are* RoHS compliant will be offered after the July 1 2006 deadline AND at what 
cost. Today, over 70% of SMT parts are compliant, moving to 100% by December. 
What is interesting is all the pots and switches MOTM uses are compliant, but I 
need to check on the jacks.

What does this mean going forward? The honest answer is: right now, I don't 
know! If I can get the parts in RoHS, then maybe nothing at all. But what if say 
Analog Devices doesn't offer the MAT02EH pair used in the VCO? Do I redesign the 
pcb to accommodate?

SOLDER - well obviously this is an issue :)  Kester and other companies are 
going full-tilt-boogie trying to formulate 'no lead' solder. The main problem in 
the solder is that the 'chemistry' is HIGHLY sensitive to lead contamination. 
Meaning, if you have a leaded part and use non-lead solder on it, the lead 
'leeches out' of the part and the solder joint forms tiny cracks. Joy :(

What does this mean for not just MOTM, but everyone (Doepfer, Modcan, .com, 
etc). Here are the possibilities:

1) don't offer products for sale to the EU
2) find through-hole parts that are compliant, change the pcb and use non-lead 
solder
3) reboot and offer SMT product only (a la not kits)

As far as what MOTM plans are, as of this very nanosecond:

a) I'm not changing anything until June, 2006. For all I know, the EU may just 
say "Hey, we were just fooling around!" So, don't panic, don't sell off your 
gear.

b) I'm going to carefully keep track of the parts situation. You CAN solder RoHS 
parts with lead solder, so every colander quarter I will see if RoHS is offered 
in say TL072s and if so, start shipping them. The resistors and caps are what I 
have to check. It may be, for example, that 1% resistors are offered so all the 
resistors in the kits would switch over to 1% which some of you uber-DIYers do 
anyway :)  I may change transistors types. I may change jack vendors. I may 
offer the wire without the "dipped" leads.

c) around April-May of next year, I will have to decide what to *really* do. It 
may boil down to: do I keep the kits as they are and abandon the EU users? Do I 
kill kits altogether and offer SMT, assembled versions only? I can't do both 
because assembled modules have never exceeded 7% of sales.

I suspect both Doepfer and AS will go to 100% SMT: they really have no choice. 
So will Bob Moog.

Yep, being in the synth business sure can be 'fun' at times :(

Meanwhile, the month of July is my R&D month. I will dribble out some assembled 
modules (mostly my tech is soldering the pc boards to allow 100% of the backlog 
to ship by Sept). I really need to 'stop' and get the 650, the 600 and the 485 
out the door.

I hope that Tony can find a way to get back in the game.

Paul S.