Am Tue, 15 May 2018 15:08:54 +0200 schrieb "Dr. Frank" <[email protected]>:
> Hello David, > > the 3458A is not offered any more by the usual distributors here in > Germany, like datatec or Meilhouse. > > That's due to EU:RoHS directive , i.e. leadfree soldering is > required, and the last exemption for 'measuring and displaying > devices' ran out as of July 2017. > > So KS found a way to export that lead containg 3458A directly from > the U.S., but I do not remember the special judicial trick for > that... only that this very same instrument is now called EU3458A. > In the meantime I got to know what kind of trick that is: Keysight Germany imported a few hundred units into the EU just before the last exemption ran out. Those have been put on shelves and are now sold as EU3458A (basic unit) or EU3458AX (including options 001 and 002). So they're not lead-free at all, it just happens that - and this is my personal interpretation - legally Keysight Germany is reselling units that have been bought and shipped from Keysight Headquarters into the EU before the final deadline. > KS up to now had no chance at all to redesign this instrument to > lead-free, because many special components were either terminated > already, or were custom specific parts, which never had an updated > lead-free equivalent, or were through-hole components with no proper > SMD variant. Just look at that badly designed LTZ1000A reference > inside the 34470A, that's nearly a 1:1 copy, but with lower-grade SMD > chip resistors, instead of the original Vishay bmf through-hole ones. > > Other examples are the fast comparators EL2018, the A/D hybrid, > probably many of the FETs, and the TaN resistor arrays. > Non-availability of special components, especially non-existence of lead-free and/or through-hole variants is nothing that would actuallly stop Keysight, or any other major manufacturer from updating their equipment. After all, if they already employ custom parts, nobody is stopping them from packaging in a way that would make them RoHS-compliant. It would be a very obscure manufacturing process that actually has the banned substances in the silicon, so custom packaging would most likely solve that issue. Also the other things mentioned are not unsolvable. Parts are becoming unobtanium? In nearly every case that can be solved. Products and manufacturing processes can be transferred, and there are fabs willing to do exactly that, and not all of them stop talking to you if you don't ask for thousands of wafers a month. Besides, they (that is, Keysight and competitors) do have the capabilities to do full custom asics if needed. It's much more likely that they don't see sufficient market demand to justify doing that. In the end it's not so many people that actually need 6 digits or more. Best regards, Florian _______________________________________________ volt-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
