In the old days the warranty was 12 months or 12,000 miles. My current car has a 5/50K bumper to bumper. Then 7/70 powertrain and emissions. In my view a part would have to have a very high failure rate to be replaced at no cost after these warranties. At some point you are on your own.
True though if a part is far inferior to what other manufacturers are providing, you may lose business, but thats a business and engineering decision, right or wrong.
You expect manufacturers to warrantee electronics forever? Is not going to happen. electronics have failure modes like everything else, they are just more subtle, such as whisker growth.
Whisker growth can be successfully mitigated by alloying in (just a touch of) lead. But, Heaven forbid somebody’s 5 y.o. would disassemble the dash to gnaw on the electronics! So, absent any compelling reason to do so…we can’t have lead.
You know how one’s parents said, “Now THIS is why we can’t have nice things?” Well, I feel the same way about stifling regulation: “Now THIS is why we can’t have stuff that actually works!”
So, absent any compelling reason to do so…we can’t have lead.
Actually, the compelling reason has more to do with leaching from refuse piles due to improper disposal of printed circuit board assemblies. that affects everybody when it gets into ground water or surface reservoirs.
Look, lead free solder has been the industry standard for a long time already. All of the kinks have been worked out long ago. Whisker growth doesn’t happen to the point it’s a concern unless you’re on orbit so leaded solders are still allowed in those applications. In all my years in electronics design and manufacturing, I have never seen a single board come back for tin whiskers forming over time causing a failure. Longevity is all about design margin. We just completed a design that has a calculated MTTF of 700k hours. Something demanded by the semiconductor industry due to the high cost of down time…but as was stated, all things eventually fail…
I’m sorry but I don’t know what “tin whiskers” are. Seems to me though if some parts are so critical, its easier to build in a redundant system for when the part fails instead of trying to build a part that will never fail. But really nothing all that critical in a car.
Actually, the compelling reason has more to do with leaching from refuse piles due to improper disposal of printed circuit board assemblies. that affects everybody when it gets into ground water or surface reservoirs.Really? So why are there no mass lead poisonings? Why, instead, did they LOWER acceptable lead content in blood when NOBODY tested "positive" under the old measurements? (Gotta stay relevant, after all.)
It’s not dioxin or hydrazine. It’s not even mercury. It’s lead, virtually insoluble in fresh water. (What actually happens is that the alloy quickly oxidizes/passivizes, leaving no more contamination likely.) Lead might kill you…provided it’s 150-ish grains’ worth, delivered at high velocity. Aside from that, WAY bigger fish to fry.
Remember, it was not all that long ago that we put TONS of aerosolized lead out there!
(Aviation gas is STILL leaded.) Not terribly smart…but we’re all here to tell the tale. Heck, the house where I spent my teenage years used lead solder in the pipes. My overzealous parents did a water test, which showed no hazardous levels of lead (“Just run the water a bit, first thing in the morning.”)
Doesn’t it tick you off, having to “make do” with an inferior solder? As somebody who has used both lead-based and lead-free solder…Pb solder is a DREAM to work with! Wets the whole surface area like it was born to do it…capillary action on steroids!
P.S. how much solder is on the typical PCB…a whole milligram?!?
P.S. how much solder is on the typical PCB...a whole milligram?!?
How many PCB assemblies are manufactured daily? 
Would you prefer there be an irreversible problem before action is taken when the solution is actually quite simple?
Yes, leaded solders are easier to work with. Trichlor was a better solvent too…we used to dump used oil right in the backyard. Where’s the mass contamination, death and destruction? Does anybody still think that is acceptable?
We shouldn’t have to be forced to do what makes sense but out of sight, out of (most people’s) minds…
I'm sorry but I don't know what "tin whiskers" are.
It’s a phenomenon where crystals of tin spontaneously grow out of pieces of tin. This creates a problem on PCBs when tin is used. If they grow such that they touch an adjoining circuit, they short it and can create all manner of havoc.
A picture of tin whiskers in action:
As long as there is free tin, whiskers can grow. The likelihood of whiskers is reduced with the addition of lead, but it has to be eutectic or lead rich ro eliminate free tin. Another good way to eliminate tin whiskers is to strain relieve the soldered joints, or don’t induce any residual strain to begin with. Europeans have a program with the acronym RoHS that eliminates the use of tin in high reliability systems.
Holy cow. Time for a shave.