ROHS compliant 63/37 leaded solder paste?

[smbaker]

Silly question. I bought some solder paste from amazon, leaded 63/37. I was surprised when I noticed it has a ROHS logo on the package. I thought ROHS solder and paste had to be lead-free?

[Cubdriver]

That's the impression I'm under, too.  RoHS should mean lead free.  Either it's not 63/37 Sn/Pb solder, or, more likely, the RoHS logo has been put on the package either mistakenly or nefariously.  I'd lean towards the latter.  Is it branded, and if so, what brand?  US source, or overseas?

-Pat

[JoeN]

   RoHS is a Restriction On Hazardous Substances.  One of them is lead.  The lead in any RoHS complaint product must be minuscule.  It's mislabeled.   In the US it doesn't matter, though.  Leaded solder is still super common.  I was just looking at pound after pound of the stuff at Fry's today.

[smbaker]

The brand is "MG Chemicals", which seems to be enough of a name brand to be sold at distributors like Mouser and Digikey. As far as origin, it says on the back "M.G. Chemicals Ltd. Ontario, Canada. Product of the USA".

The reason I'm asking about this stuff is that while I'm just an amateur at SMD soldering, I've had far better luck with other pastes than I had with this crap. It was thick, dry, wouldn't push through the needle, and didn't melt or flow very well. Made me wonder if I somehow got lead-free instead of leaded. The part number (4860P-35G) clearly resolves to a leaded product though. The ROHS compliancy must be a misprint.

So it does appear to be a name brand, but I wouldn't put it past Amazon to sell a counterfeit, or for it to have sat unrefrigerated on the shelf for an unknown period of time.

[Ian.M]

Misprints don't just happen.  If its genuine, and mislabelled as ROHS compliant it would expose MG Chemicals to serious liability in the European market, so any changes to existing product labelling would be checked carefully. OTOH the fakers don't care as once they've successfully offloaded their current inventory into the supply chain, they just fold their shell company and start another one to distance themselves from the fallout.

 Post a good sharp photo of it, especially all labels so those familiar with the genuine article can look for discrepancies.

[smbaker]

Post a good sharp photo of it, especially all labels so those familiar with the genuine article can look for discrepancies.

Here's a picture of the label from the package. The logo is in the lower right corner.

[mmagin]

Did you get it from a trustworthy retailer (Amazon, or a US-based seller that specializes in this kind of thing)?
I wonder if this is actually a counterfeit product and not actually MG Chemicals.

If it really is them, their graphic design person f'd up

[smbaker]

"Ships from and sold by Amazon.com", so it was one that was inventoried and shipped by Amazon directly, not one of Amazon's third-party merchants.

[rstofer]

The package may very well be RoHS compliant and it is required to be.  It the tube of paste itself marked RoHS?  BTW, that RoHS logo seems odd since no such thing is part of the regulations.  A CE mark is all that is required.

[smbaker]

Doesn't say anything about ROHS compliance on the tube itself.

[helius]

The Reduction Of Hazardous Substances is specific to electrical and electronics products. Since a tube of solder isn't electronics, I suppose it complies with the regulation.
There is also a confusing concept called "ROHS-5", which means that the product is free of mercury, cadmium, chromate+6 ion, and brominated phenyl ethers, but does contain lead. This is used to show that the manufacturer does care about pollution, but that they use lead for reliability reasons and the user must be exempt from the regulations (military, medical, or network infrastructure).

[ebastler]

Here's a picture of the label from the package.

Hey, that's funky. Look at the photograph of the whole package, and the product description in big bold letters at the top. The English product description says "leaded" (as one would expect from the Pb37 spec). But all the other languages right underneath seem to state "lead free"?! 

[bson]

I have the same paste, both in syringe and a 250g tub, and neither has that logo anywhere on the packaging or the syringe.  They work extremely well at room temperature, or even straight out of the fridge, so I suspect you don't have the genuine article.

[TimFox]

Note that the chemical definition is 63% Sn (tin) and 37% Pb (lead), but that the various languages under that all say "without lead".
Alternative facts?

[newbrain]

What eblaster and TimFox said.
It is quite fishy that you see Sn63/Pb37 right above "unleaded" in four different languages.

If that's a renown brand, I would say this a counterfeit.

[eKretz]

Gotta be counterfeit. It's highly unlikely that a company like MG Chemicals would make a mistake like that.

[Ian.M]

Take a look around the MG site at the images for their solders and pastes, and you'll see the inconsistencies with their house 'style'
Lets see how they could get there:

Start from a Pb free packet insert card
1. Type 'SN' instead of 'Sn' and 'PB' instead of 'Pb'
2. Paste in "SN63/PB37" five times
3. Edit "LEAD FREE" to "LEADED"
4. Forget to edit the other languages
5. Add red stripe for Sn63/Pb37

or:

Start from a Sn/Pb product card.
1. Use wrong graphic
2. Upper case all the 'Sn63/Pb37'
3. Change all non-English text to equivalent Lead Free text.

Neither of those scenarios are plausible at the real MG even if the card was updated by an unpaid school age intern, as someone more senior would have had to check and approve the artwork before it went to the printers. 

I'd say there's a 99.9% chance its pure fake, and a very small chance someone dodgy is breaking down condemned date expired bulk packs and repacking in fake retail packs.

[Tomorokoshi]

Additionally, there is strange capitalization in "BLEIfrEI" in the German section.

[helius]

In addition to the issues identified by Ian.M, I will note that none of the products I have ever bought from M.G. Chemicals have languages other than English, French, or Spanish on the label. And they do not have the "e" sign, which is defined by the EU.

The person(s) who counterfeited the insert card have added the "e" sign and multiple languages to maximize their sales to countries they have identified as potential markets. Note how on the left side there are six times repeated "Superior joint strength", but only English and French translations of this phrase were available: the counterfeiters could not find translations into the languages which they added to the label (Spanish, Italian, German, and Korean) so they left the rest in English.

[smbaker]

I've sent an email to MG Chemicals technical support and USA West sales with a copy of the packaging and the lot number of the paste. Hopefully they will get to the bottom of whether or not it's legitimate product. You'd think they would want to know if counterfeit or expired product is being sold at a major retailer like Amazon.

Comparing the paste I received to pictures of the paste on digikey and mouser, the syringe itself looks identical, though the needle shown in the pictures is different. That might not be significant, it could be they switched needle suppliers since digikey and mouser received their artwork. The label on the syringe itself appears legitimate (no language oddities), although a piece of scotch tape has been attixed to the seam of the label, perhaps to keep it from pealing off.

It's also the case that this was shipped without cold pack, though the lack of a cold pack may be a casualty of buying from a generic retailer like Amazon. I have to wonder how long it sat on the shelf, potentially unrefrigerated, before I received it.

I'm betting on Ian M.'s suspicion that this is expired bulk product that someone is repackaging and selling as individual new retail.

Scott

[Ian.M]

Its far far more likely to be entirely fake than expired product.  What are the odds against enough tubes in bulk packs ending up expired then someone dodgy being in a position to repack them in fake retail packs, *AND* get them into the Amazon supply chain?

Anyone legit with short-date bulk packs to break wouldn't bother with the fake insert card - simply bag and sell.

[JoeN]

I like MG Chemicals and have found all their products to be top quality.  I buy them at Fry's.  What I wonder is, if someone is going to pick a brand name for counterfeit solder, why MG?  They are not as well known as Kester, as an example.

[Tomorokoshi]

Here's another one. In the vertical-up writing on the side, it says:

Superior joint strength Superior joint strength Superior joint strength Forme des joints forts Superior joint strength Superior joint strength

[DaveW]

Stuff can be marked RoHS and still contain lead; if you but some of the Analog Devices gyros then they come with lead balls, but are still marked RoHS compliant, just with an addendum that they do contain lead. Confused our assemblers and we ended up asking Analog what on earth was going on...

[T3sl4co1l]

FYI, anything with exemptions (usually aerospace applications, and elements that simply can't be substituted) can still be called RoHS.

For example, barium is quite toxic (when soluble), and it's unavoidable in type 2 ceramic capacitors (barium titanate).  So, these capacitors are always by exemption, at least on their barium content.  (I would assume single elements or chemicals can be exempted, individually.  So that's not to say that you can go ahead and solder barium-rich capacitors with lead, just because they have one kind of exemption.)

It's still weird putting it on leaded solder, which, in and of itself, clearly has an excessive amount in its composition, and isn't necessarily intended for exempted applications.  (Composition is necessary to discuss, because harmful materials can be diluted in the assembly process.  You'd have to read the standard to see exactly which levels of assembly are considered a whole component, for purposes of composition.  For example, a packaged semiconductor might have lead solder die-attach, or lead ball flip-chip construction.  But a PCBA might not be allowed to use leaded solder, even if the overall concentration of the assembly is satisfactory.  I don't know offhand where they draw the line here.)

Tim