SX and SX-G

bsparky

Hi all I am thinking of trying the SX micro but was wondering what was the differance between the SX20AC/SS and SX20AC/SS-G chip. Thanks

Rsadeika

G stands for green, or·lead free.

Ryan Clarke

G = RoHS Compliant (in some instances this does not necessarily mean lead free, just that it meets standards that were established).


Ryan

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Ryan Clarke
Parallax Tech Support

RClarke@Parallax.com

Sterling

How do you make your device RoHS complaint? Is there a fee you have to pay and does it have to be tested? RoHS seems like a waste of money to me.

bsparky

Thanks guys........

Jon Williams

We paid a lot of money to repackage and retest the devices for RoHS compliance, yes. We didn't do it by choice; this is a requirement set by the EU for selling product there. A Google search should give you all the details.

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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax

Sterling

So we all end up paying a higher price for the decision of some foreign government.

Paul Baker

They are the same price, most RoHS chips are no more expensive than their lead counterparts.

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Jon Williams

Paul's right; we absorbed the cost to make the change so that we could continue sales in Europe.· We have a lot of great customers there and don't want to abandon them for a decision made by the EU.

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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax

Sterling

So if Parallax paid extra to make them RoHS compliant, doesn't that mean that the customer eventually has to pay for this? Since all of Parallax's money comes from us, we pay extra.

Jon Williams

It was a choice: go RoHS compliant and keep sales in Europe, or save money now and lose it later. You might want to do some investigating into who determined the RoHS requirements and why; should be interesting reading.

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Jon Williams
Applications Engineer, Parallax

Sterling

I'm not saying that it was a bad choice. I'm saying that because of some decision in some foreign goverment, we as a customer eventually have to pay for it. Maybe I'm too young (I'm 14) and these terms are too simplistic, but I still see that we'll be paying extra for this. We'll eventually pay extra for every part that goes RoHS compliant.

Paul Baker

Sometimes people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing something that is in thier best interest. EU sometimes does this to the US and California sometimes does this to the rest of the US. There has been a serious problem with the disposal of materials containing heavy metals such as lead. They must be placed in impermiable lined beds and capture the water that filters through the waste and leeches a portion of the heavy metals and must make special arangements to store the material or process the runoff to make it inert. A sizable portion of the electronics waste produced by the west is shipped to asian countries that have weak environmental laws because its cheaper than recycling or paying for hazardous waste disposal fees. These products end up in unprotected landfills, and to complicate things communities spring up around these landfills where people eek out an existance by going over the waste pulling anything of scrap value (copper wire etc) to sell to a local scrap vendor. The heavy metals frequently seep into the ground and contaminates the community's drinking water.

The RoHS laws are EU's attempt at becoming a responsible·regional community in how they effect the environment. Whether they are right or wrong, at least thier intent is admirable.

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Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 5/3/2006 4:47:11 PM GMT

Sterling

I just don't know if I trust some foreign goverment to tell me what's in my best interest. I think the choice should be my own. I think this is getting off topic, so I'll stop.

Michael Chadwick

Paul, that was a very succinct explanation. Our young friend should realize that his/her generation is the one that is going to have to pay for the cleanup, worse if we didn't do the ROHS thing. There is an un-documented and un-appreciated cost to everything cheap we now use: the disposal cost. The EU have regulations that are a start to attempt to allocate this cost and cover it. Otherwise the government will have to cover the cost and we all know that comes out of our pockets one way or another.

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MRC

Paul Baker

Sterling, I think you have a misunderstanding of the situation. EU has not forced any American citizen into abandoning products containing lead, they dont have the power to do so. All they have done is say "if you are a business that sells products in OUR organization of countries, they must contain no more than X amount of heavy metals in them". The EU law doesn't does directly affect a resident of any country outside the EU, but any company which wants to keep their European customers·must comply with the law. Companies are finding that the avenue that is in thier best financial interest is to switch to RoHS compliance and drop lead based products (its cheaper to produce one variation of a product than two). So the RoHS regulation doesn't directly affect the American consumer one bit, and American companies which are doing the switch, are voluntarily doing so based solely on the motive of profits.

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Post Edited (Paul Baker) : 5/3/2006 7:47:19 PM GMT

Ryan Clarke

Again, RoHS doesn't necessarily mean "lead free"- as Jon suggested, reading up on RoHS and what it means could be interesting.

Ryan

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Ryan Clarke
Parallax Tech Support

RClarke@Parallax.com

Sterling

I get that it's not required in the US, but we end up paying for it anyway. Why would a company want to make two versions when it's cheaper to develop one? So whether we like it or not, we have to pay for it. And it's going to cost extra to make it compliant, isn't it?

So it's not a direct way of making us pay for it, but in the end, we do.

Kevin Wood

Sterling said...
So if Parallax paid extra to make them RoHS compliant, doesn't that mean that the customer eventually has to pay for this? Since all of Parallax's money comes from us, we pay extra.

Sterling,

Jon Williams said that Parallax absorbed the cost, which means that instead of passing the extra cost on to their customers by raising prices, they dipped into their profits to pay for the expenses.

So over a give amount of time in the short term, Parallax makes less money. But over the long term, they will recover their losses, based on the fact that they can keep their customers using their product in the EU, and they can gain new customers that want to use their product in the EU.

Right now, you are seeing this through 14-yr old eyes. In 30 years, you will see things a lot differently. But for a current, relevent example< do some reseach of mercury levels in fish, and the health concerns associated.

So even if you paid more $$$ for an SX chip, or BS2, what is that compared to possibly paying for lax pollution controls with your health, or your children's health, or the health of some group of people that had no say in the fact that some company decided to build a toxic waste dump adjacent to their primary farming lands?

Just to let you know, this isn't a slam. At 14-yo, you have a lot of time ahead of you, and many decisions to make over the course of your life. You may one day be the person in charge of a company, or even a country, making decisions that will have an impact far beyond your expectations.

I think every adult here could look back at the course of their life from the age of 14 and give you a list of "I shoulda' done..." Try to see the bigger picture.

Sterling

I've been doing alot of reading about RoHS today. I've found that there will be alot of indirect costs for every industry. It also appears that there are alot of people who disagree that this will have any sort of an enviromental impact. These people are basically looking at the scientific studies on RoHS and not the news stories and find a lot of problems with the studies.

After reading both sides of the story, it looks like you can't easily say that it will help the environment, but it will cost alot of companies money.

I'll continue to study this subject. It seems I have alot to learn.

Ken Gracey

I can tell you what kinds of costs it has had for Parallax.

(a) In many cases, we now have double the component inventory (leaded and RoHS).
(b) Many leaded parts will be eBay'd or trashed at some point.
(c) The management of our inventory due to RoHS has become a major time-sucker.
(d) Lead times for the RoHS parts are very long, or sometimes they're simply not available. This is one reason why we have such bad backorder situations lately.
(e) Meetings. Countless meetings to see that our staff is on the same page and our conversion plan is working.
(f) Answering customer and distributor forms. Every company has a different way of checking if their suppliers will be RoHS compliant.
(g) The RoHS components are often the same cost or 5-10 cents more.

And there's more I could add to this list. It's costing us a lot of money, I can tell you for sure. We've kept our prices the same and even lowered some of them. When California adopts the RoHS rules at the end of this year, the entire country (and Canada, to some extent) will need to follow suit. Only China and the Middle East will likely avoid these rules unless they export.

Long term, this is a small step in the right direction for the environment. . .in my opinion.

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

John R.

Note that once all parts are RoHS compliant (like will be happening with the SX), many of the items Ken metions will become REDUCTIONS in costs for Parallax, including:

(a) Double Inventory
(c) Inventory tracking and management (keeping two types separate)
(e) Once done, the meetings can stop. (This will make time for other meetings on other subjects.)

Backorders should also become reduced, as in stead of having to divide production between two different parts, Parallax can just order "twice as much" of one.

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John R.

8 + 8 = 10

Sterling

As I understand, they won't be complete reductions because it costs more to produce and to use RoHS compliant devices. It takes a hotter temperature to solder and it is more damaging to your equipment. So if everyone is using more energy to solder and maintain their equipment, doesn't that mean we're burning more fossil fuels? Doesn't this mean we're just taking from one side of the problem and adding it somewhere else?

There is alot of doubt out there as to how severe the environmental impact is with non-RoHS in the first place... And alot of talk about "unintended consiquences".

Post Edited (Sterling) : 5/4/2006 11:33:15 PM GMT

Forrest

Sterling,
Did you read Ken's last message. RoHS is being MANDATED on a world wide basis. While I believe the environmental advantage gained by switching to no-lead devices is minisule, it's out of the engineers hands at this point and has been legislated into existance. If you don't comply with the rules, you'll be barred from doing business in those affected countries. Also those RoHS compnents shortages Ken talked about are a WORLDWIDE problem. RoHS has created shortages on once commonplace items. It recently took me nearly 6 weeks just to get some 250V 0.3A fuses - they had to be shipped from Germany!

Sterling

Forrest,

I've read all of the messages. I understand how RoHS works as I've been doing alot of reading on the subject.

What I am doing, is trying to point out that this RoHS seems to do more harm than good worldwide... that's all.

Ken Gracey

There's one more expense that Sterling pointed out which I forgot to mention.

The higher reflow temperature of 240C is not obtainable by many of the existing SMT production line ovens, so they need to be replaced. Throughout the assembly houses I've visited in China, each of them bought new ovens specifically for lead-free. One "winner" are the Heller oven folks in Germany because their ovens seem to be going to the progressive assembly houses.

We build the BASIC Stamp modules in our Rocklin office, and our existing reflow oven has been able to provide just enough heat to flow the solder.

It is certainly the case that even though these rules apply only to Europe, they are effectively mandated worldwide since no manufacturing facility is going to try to run two versions of the same product side by side.

Ken Gracey
Parallax, Inc.

Paul Baker

Hmmm, this may be a great opportunity for the hobbyist to pick up some choice equipment and supplies that they otherwise couldn't afford. If you are only producing products for personal or very limited production, you dont need to follow RoHS. I have no plans of replacing my spool of Sn/Pb/Bi solder, it makes things much easier than using 240C solder.

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Sterling

Lemons into lemonaide... I get it! hehe

Ryan Clarke

Sterling,

Something interesting to consider: look at a car battery/the automobile industry, and their lead useage- then check to see if RoHS is going to change their manufacture in any way. Then compare the lead content of say a homework board, or just an IC to that in one car battery.

Ryan

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Ryan Clarke
Parallax Tech Support

RClarke@Parallax.com

Paul Baker

True, but the disposal of batteries is more controlled than electronics, automotive repair shops pay a price to have them sent for recycling. And SLA bricks availible for the consumer are designed to be self contained through the traditional disposal route to contain any contamination of the landfill, even though the responsible consumer would also send it for recycling. The EU drew a line between whether the contaminate was nessesary for the operation of the device or not. Lead Acid batteries rely upon the chemical properties of Lead, whereas the electronics industry relies upon the physical properties of lead. The EU determined that physical properties wasn't a sufficient reason for it's use.

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LoopyByteloose

Sterling,
If the world operated with completely effiencent economics, many people would be starving and out of a job. Others would be working like robots. The 'haves' would have it all, and the 'have nots' would suffer complete starvation. Even if that person was your not so bright son or daughter.

Increased cost is not everything and never will be. It only becomes nasty when it concentrates wealth and denies opportunities to work and live well. Everyone needs a job, even if they don't have the smarts to be an electronic engineer. RoHS may be a bit wasteful, may even up the cost of product a bit; but like many things it keeps money moving in many directions and that means many more people eat.

Just think of it as providing a few more inventory clerks with a way to survive a few more days.

Hungry starving people are the greatest danger in the world; more than government requlations.

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"When all think alike, no one is thinking very much.' - Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

······································································ Warm regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan

Post Edited (Kramer) : 5/5/2006 4:47:37 PM GMT