Keywords
Citation
Ellis, B. (2001), "Internet commentary", Circuit World, Vol. 27 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.2001.21727dag.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
Internet commentary
Keywords: Environment, Green issues, Pollution, Dry-film resist, Internet
Get thee glass eyes;And, like a scurvy politician, seemTo see the things thou dost not(William Shakespeare, King Lear, (1605-6) Act 4, Sc. 6, 1).
PCB fabrication has been stated by the US EPA to be in the "top 20" of polluting industries. Whether the same can be said in Europe may be discussed, but it is certainly not the most innocent. What would seem to be certain is that, like it or not, we shall not be allowed to maintain all our current methods of manufacture. For example, the proposed WEEE directive will force us, sooner or later, to use different laminates and remove lead from all our processes. What I have discovered lately, from a politician, is that this directive (which may already have passed into law by the time you read this) is founded on nothing more substantial than thin air. I quote below an e-mail that I received from a Mr Axel Eggert, assistant to Mr Florenz who is rapporteur of the WEEE committee, (verbatim):
Subject: Re: WEEEDate: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 12:01:57 +0100From: "Karl-Heinz Florenz"<kflorenz@europarl.eu.int>To: <b_ellis@protonique.com>Dear Mr Ellis,thank you very much for these informations. In his report on end-of-life vehicles Mr Florenz tabled an amendment that would have required risk assessment. But unfortunately this was accepted neither by Parliament nor Commission and Council. Thus we cannot find any majority for such an approach on the follow-up directive on WEEE and ROHS. ...
In other words, the whole sad affair, which will have profound economic and technical repercussions on our industry, is not based on sound scientific principles but just on the emotional impact of such buzzwords as "lead" and "bromine". My personal view is that it is scandalous that politicians, aided and abetted by vested interests, without a microgram of scientific proof, can so influence an industry.
This is not the first time that this kind of thing has happened, and not just in Europe. But let me cite some facts about a chemical which is widely used industrially, trichloroethylene (TCE). This is a popular cleaning solvent throughout the world and about 500,000 tonnes are manufactured annually. It has been used world-wide for over 70 years, initially under very bad conditions. Unlike its sister, carbon tetrachloride, there has been little evidence over the years that it was seriously toxic and certainly none that it was carcinogenic. That is until a case occurred in East Germany, before the reunification. This was in a cardboard/carton factory where, apparently, large quantities of TCE were sloshed around, defying all normal rules of industrial hygiene. A few of the workers were, unfortunately, stricken with cancer, more than would be statistically expected. A person, I think he was a toxicologist but not an epidemiologist, reported this and wrote a paper, stating categorically that TCE was responsible for the cancer. He tried to publish his paper, but none of the reputable scientific journals allowed his paper past peer review, because there was no study included of confounding factors, such as other chemical exposure, smoking, alcohol intake, etc. Eventually, the paper was published in a minor journal. It transpired later that the TCE in the factory was heavily stabilised with an epoxide substance, epichlorohydrin, which is indeed a suspected carcinogen and certainly much more toxic than the TCE itself. Other chemicals were also used in the factory in question. Despite this bad science, the German authorities have categorically classed TCE in the most dangerous classification, Class 1, which states that it is known to cause cancer in humans. Armed with this misleading information, they have bulldozed their ideas into the EU labelling requirements, without a single shred of scientific evidence that it is carcinogenic. It should be said that epoxide stabilisers are never used today in commercial TCE, so this is no reason for these restrictions.
Why do I say, "without a single shred of scientific evidence"? Mainly because the most serious study published on the toxicology and epidemiology of TCE, written by a task force of seven leading scientists in the field and then peer-reviewed by 15 others, debunks entirely this German study. This was sponsored and reported by the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (ECETOC Technical Report No. 60, Trichloroethylene: Assessment of Human Carcinogenic Hazard, ISSN-0773-8072-60). It has, in its 77 fully referenced pages, shown, in the final words of its conclusion, "Taking all of this information into account, it is concluded that exposure to TCE does not present a carcinogenic hazard to man at levels of current occupational exposure standards". The epidemiological studies involved thousands of exposed workers in Europe and the USA and in no case was the number of cancer cases in the cohort more than was expected, compared with non-exposed workers living in the same regions. The toxicological studies, which have primarily been done on rodents, have been shown to be invalid because the metabolic paths in humans are different from those in these animals. The US HSIA, OSHA, ACGIH and NIOSH have also all classed it as not believed to be carcinogenic to humans.
I started this commentary, as is my custom, with a quotation, this time from the Immortal Bard. I should like to conclude this part of it with a second one, by an American poet and journalist, Don Marquis:
did you evernotice that whena politiciandoes get an ideahe usuallygets it all wrong(archys life of mehitabel (1933) archygrams).
OK, so what has this got to do with the Internet? Nothing whatsoever! But I do feel better having got it off my chest! However, to justify my keep, I'll repeat the e-mail address of Karl-Heinz Florenz, MEP, should you wish to berate him for "getting it all wrong", kflorenz@europarl.eu.int Higher up the scale, you can write to The Honourable Margot Wallström, Commissioner for the Environment, European Commission, 200 rue de la Loi, 1049 Brussels, Belgium. I could not find her e-mail address, but you may try envinfo@cec.eu.int which seems to go to her department. Then there is the Minister responsible for the environment in whichever country you live. If you wish to see the ECETOC report, you can order it at http://www.ecetoc.org Please be vociferous in appealing for legislative sanity based on sound science.
Finally, if you do not know me or my work, do not think that I am a reactionary Luddite, opposed to environmental change or a bettering of health and safety. Few in our industry have struggled more for sustainable environmental protection than I have and am continuing to do (this is not trumpet-blowing, but a plain statement of fact). I will support any reasonable action to promote the environment and sustainability within our industry, but I refuse to support the extremist and ill-informed pipe-dreams of politicians or technocrats. Nor will I join the ranks of the lobbyists (often with commercial interests or with misguided political motives) promoting their own agendas to these same dreamers. But I will state my opinions when the need arises – and the need has arisen!
I have recently been reading the excellent work of Karl Dietz on dry-film resists. This has inspired me for today to look at what the Internet offers in the way of information on dry-film resist technology.
Obviously, this URL must be the first to be reviewed. It belongs to the Korean Kolon firm, manufacturing Accuimage resists. The Home Page is very simple and invites one to select either Korean or English text. It is let down by the fact that the head contains:
<meta name="keywords" content=""><meta name="description" content="">
without any content to these two lines. The astonishing thing is that the lines are there! The download time of the Home Page is excellent. Clicking on "English" takes you to a page which must be considered also as a kind of Home Page for this language. Like the true Home Page, it does not have any co-ordinates of the company. Although slightly slower, it does download reasonably rapidly and is very pleasing to the eye and legible. It gives a brief introduction to their range of resists. It also shows a menu which can take you to any of four other pages in English. The first one, entitled Innovation, gives a three line history of resist manufacture within the company and their resolution aims for the next few years in the form of a graphic. The page entitled Applications simply catalogues the seven different resist types which are available. Most of these are produced in various thicknesses. I noted that this company did not appear to offer a solder mask in their range. I did find, though, that the technical information available on this, and on their other pages, is very sparse indeed. The page entitled Globalisation gives a number of e-mail links to offices in Korea, Japan, Europe and the USA, plus the telephone and fax numbers of the Korean headquarters. No address is given. A small number of other links are also supplied. That is it! There is no technical data on how to use their products – altogether a rather meagre site.
http://www.eternal.com.tw/english/html/products/photoresist.htm
I suppose that the name of this Taiwanese company, Eternal, may have something to do with the very slow server time; at least when I tried to access the site, it seemed to take an eternity. The URL, which I give above, is not the Home Page but is the root page for the photoresist division. It is within the bounds of acceptability for its file size, but it would have been preferable to have a smaller one in view of the poor server. The true Home Page is not worth going to; just short of 100 kilobytes, it took me three and a half minutes to download. It provides little information and is certainly not ideal, with no meta tags, for search engine spiders. Coming back to the divisional root page, it has everything that I would expect: a brief description of the products; what they are used for and, oh joy!, the name and address of the company with full contact details. There is also a link entitled "Detailed product type, performance and usage". This all-encompassing title takes you to the only other page, which lists the ten types of dry-film resist which the company offers, also in various thicknesses, each with the main characteristics and typical applications. It would not be possible to unequivocally select a given resist for a certain application because the choice is so wide. Like the previous manufacturer, this one also does not offer a solder mask. Again, the site lacks much technical detail.
http://www.asahi-kasei.co.jp/asahi/english/bisdmain/takakuka/electron.htm
From Taiwan to Japan, we are going from a poor site to a very bad one, at least in terms of information. The Sunfort product would seem conventional, but the whole information is contained within 14 lines of an average of three words each! That is the only comment that this site merits.
http://www.tok.co.jp/index-e.htm
Have you heard of the Tokyo Okha Kogya Company Limited? No, neither have I. But they do make a dry-film resist. It is called Ordyl. Do you want to know more? If so, be sure not to visit this site, because you will find nothing other than the name.
As is well known, the Laminar series of photoresists have changed their manufacturer's name several times in the 30 years since they came on the market. Of course, they are currently marketed by Shipley but, if you put "dry-film photoresist" into a search engine, nothing whatsoever comes up about them. The reason for this is obvious when one examines the Home Page of this site. The Webmaster made a grave error in that he placed the keywords and description in a frame and not in the frame set of the Home Page. He also made another one in that the Home Page has a whopping aggregate file size of over 150 kilobytes. This is actually variable because the main image in the centre of the screen is not fixed and, each time you press the reload button, a different picture appears, thanks to a JavaScript routine. To find the dry-film resists, one navigates through Products to Shipley-Ronal. This leads you to a menu including:
- •
inner layer imaging products;
- •
outer layer imaging products;
- •
outer layer tent and etch imaging products.
All three of which contain, amongst many other products, some bare details of the various dry-film resist products for conductor patterns (not for solder masks). Like many of the other sites in this review, this one also is bereft of technical details. To find an address to contact the company is a long multi-stage process. I do not think that geography is a very strong point chez Shipley, either, because I discovered that they think that India is within Europe!
http://www.hitachi-chem.co.kr/e_production.htm
I did not know that Hitachi chemicals made dry-film photoresists in Korea. I now do, because I have visited their Web site. I did not learn much more! Certainly, not worth the effort of a visit.
Figure 1. Du
Pont Home Page for printed circuit materials, showing the menu structure
Table I
Let us not forget the granddaddy of them all, Du Pont. Figure 1 is the Home Page of the printed circuit materials sub-site. It has a good list of keywords and description and is within reasonable limits for a fast download. The only thing that is missing is the headquarters address. It illustrates a menu which can take you to nine different directions or to a search facility. It should be mentioned that the sub-site is not devoted entirely to dry-film resist but also to the photographic materials used in conjunction with them. I do not consider that this site is perfect but it is one great improvement over all the others. Let me say where I think it falls down: it has individual pages for each application of dry-film resist, but it ends each page with an invitation to contact the company to learn which type of resist is most suitable for your needs. It is rather surprising that Du Pont have not provided more information for on-line consumption. My other minor niggle is in the communications. Direct e-mailing is provided for Asia, but to central addresses, for the most part, rather than directly to the regional offices. Unfortunately, to Europe or North or South America, direct e-mailing is not possible and communications over the Internet can be done only by filling in a form. This is a slower process for the user and it is much more difficult to maintain a copy of what was sent, as well as having to fill in fields which may not be relevant to the communication in question. Having said the negative side of the site, let me be very positive about the amount of technical information which is available (other than for the choice of a suitable resist). This is perfectly managed and is exemplary. In fact, this is the only site which offers any reasonable amount of information on the products which they sell. It is a veritable encyclopaedia of dry-film technology for both conductor imaging and dry-film solder masking. Congratulations, Mr Du Pont!
Brian EllisMosfiloti, Cyprusb_ellis@protonique.com