I don't want any test equipment that has been assembled with lead-free solder. In my opinion, lead-free is nothing but trouble. I only use conventional 60/40 lead solder.

These tools Hans makes are worth their weight in gold. Everyone can use the switch and lamp matrix testers. Buy them all!

Love your products and just referred you to someone who bought from you during expo.
Understand your position on lead free, but I hate the stuff.
Used to work on printers and HP RARELY had board problems. but starting in 2007ish formatters and NIC cards would fail commonly. 100% due to solder cause you could bake them to reflow the solder and it would fix about 80% of them.
M grandparents grew up with lead paint, lead in water and plumbing and they lived to late 80's/early 90's and didn't have any extra limbs or growths. lol I think it's a bunch of hooey myself.

I'll take a look at your new products and probably place another order! Thanks for the posting!
D

I've bought one of his boards and had him do some repair work. Great stuff all the way around. Next time I need a WMS bd worked on it I'm sending it to you.
Izzy

I hate to eliminate a market for products, but the reliability issues surrounding lead free solder and various certificates/proofs of compliance of RoHS, CE markings, etc and increased shipping rates has caused me to limit or cease sales to the EU for any pinball boards I'm creating. I used lead free solder and RoHS pcbs/components for a limited time on products being shipped out of the country earlier this year and most orders went through customs fine, but had a few orders to Germany get held in customs and returned due to not having proper CE certification. Can't eat $10-14 shipping refund each time that happens and I know that even if I make it known to customers that if orders are held in customs and returned, I cannot refund shipping.. some customers are still going to be upset when that happens. It's a shame because I know there's some demand from EU states for these products, but they are too niche and low volume of sales IMO to go through all that hassle and possibly have reliability issues on top of it.

Tin Whiskers from lead free solder has caused many failures in electronic equipment. Documented here:

http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/failures/index.htm

In the USA, these industries/organizations are exempt from using lead free solder:

Medical equipment
Life Safety equipment
Railroad equipment
Aircraft equipment
Ships/water craft equipment
Police equipment
Fire department equipment
Construction equipment
Military equipment
NASA
Carnival/amusement park rides

And many others too numerous to list.

Tin Whiskers in the car's control computer boards have also been cited as a possible problem in the Toyota 'unintended acceleration' incidents:

http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=247907&dfpPParams=ind_184,industry_auto,industry_gov,aid_247907&dfpLayout=article

Here's a good description of what tin whiskers are:

http://www.tinwhisker.us/

_{Post edited by KenLayton : Added link to description}

If lead free solder is such a bad product and those industries are exempt, I'm sure the governmental regulators will change their direction. All we need to do is to contact our legislators.