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The Gold Record: Nepcon China, California Become Battlegrounds
April 22, 2008 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Finally back from our China travels, having survived a brutal Vegas to Shanghai, back to Vegas, back to Shanghai, to Beijing, to Dalian stretch that consumed most of the last six weeks.
Nepcon China had a far different tone than either the CPCA Show, Productronica China, Semicon China, or IPC Printed Circuits Expo, APEX and the Designers Summit. The first set of Chinese shows were borderline boring. Attendance was sluggish, new product introductions were scarce and, other than a final day fisticuffs in one of the halls (that's right: a booth designer and exhibitor came to blows and things got fierce when one of them picked up a power drill and aimed it at the other--police eventually sorted it out.), the shows were largely lackluster.
The IPC exhibitions in Las Vegas were the opposite. The conferences and show floor were full of excitement. As has been documented here and elsewhere, the shows are considered a successful comeback for IPC, as attendance surged and the North American industry seemingly defied all economic indicators.
Nepcon China was neither lackluster nor a smashing success. In this case, the show itself became the show. With banners advertising Productronica 2009 hung directly across from the Nepcon Shanghai venue, one could not escape the coming showdown between MMI (organizers of the February exhibitions in Pudong) and Reed Exhibitions. War was declared and the battle lines drawn--this will be a fight to the death.
My EMSNow colleague, Phil Stoten, and I discuss this (and other issues) in full in our video wrap-up of Nepcon China. Watch the conversation here. California Battle Heats Up
Crazy California is at it again. Whether you're a supplier, fabricator or assembler, if you're doing business in California, you need to pay attention. IPC is urging its California members to contact the California Department of Toxic Substances (DTSC) regarding the state's Green Chemistry Initiative.
Through its "Green Chemistry Initiative," the DTSC plans to establish a new framework for chemicals management, which would have major implications for our industry. Much worse than RoHS, Green Chemistry would ban many chemicals and mandate the use of so-called "safer alternatives." The DTSC has requested public input on seven questions regarding implementation of California's Green Chemistry Initiative by April 23, 2008.
That's tomorrow in case you don't have a calendar in front of you.
Here's what IPC said: "IPC asks its members to urge the state of California not to ban specific chemicals without careful consideration of the full environmental, social and economic impacts. Often substance bans result in unintended environmental consequences. For example, review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Lead-Free Solder project illuminates the environmental trade-offs inherent in material substitutions. The study evaluated the environmental impacts of tin-lead solder versus lead-free alternative solders. Because tin-silver-copper solder in electronics requires higher processing temperatures than tin-lead solder, tens of thousands of solder machines worldwide now operate at higher temperatures. The higher operating temperatures required for the manufacture of lead-free electronics has resulted in significantly higher energy usage during manufacturing.
"The increased energy use associated with manufacturing lead-free electronics was projected by the study to cause greater air pollution, acid rain, stream eutrophication and global warming impacts than the tin-lead soldered electronics. The environmental impact of lead-free alternatives is an important factor that was not considered during the European Union's or State of California's decisions to restrict the use of lead in electronics based solely on its potential toxicity. EPA's study serves as an important reminder that there are environmental trade-offs when substituting one substance with another. A complete application of the precautionary approach would be to examine the potential impacts of likely substitutes prior to instituting a ban of a critical substance. "
If you're interested in fighting this latest green insanity, e-mail me at steve@iconnect007.comor IPC's Fern Abrams at fabrams@ipc.org. You need to get a letter in by close of business tomorrow, April 23, 2008.