ROHS and WEEE Support

Legislation Overview

RoHS, also known as Lead-Free, stands for Restriction of Hazardous Substances. RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC restricts the use of six hazardous materials found in electrical and electronic products. All applicable products in the EU market after July 1, 2006 must pass RoHS compliance. RoHS impacts the entire electronics industry.

Number One Systems and Easy-PC

Like other EDA vendors, the introduction of new legislation in Europe for the ROHS and WEEE directives has little effect on Easy-PC and the PCB design environment.

Easy-PC already supports two main features that are considered to be new technology in the design process for lead free soldering; jumpers and rounded rectangle pads.

Interactive jumpers and flying wires are fully supported in Easy-PC. Jumper length control, insulation properties and landing vias/pads can be used allowing greater user flexibility.

Oval pads are currently supported with Rounded Rectangular pads being supported at Version 10 (released July 2006). These aid the process of lead free soldering during the manufacturing stage. This style of pads is primarily associated with surface mount technology land patterns. The IPC council has stated:

"land patterns in the newly released IPC-7351 (superseding IPC-SM-782) meet requirements for surface-mount assembly with either SnPb or lead-free solders. When IPC-7351 design rules are applied, lead-free SMT assembly does not differ from eutectic SnPb soldering, and dimensional modifications are not required."

More Information

Visit rohsguide.com for more information on the ROHS and WEEE directives.