The clock is ticking before the extension of Pb-free legislation for high Pb-containing solders expire. Luckily, when RoHS was passed, those on the committe knew enough about solder alloys to know that there wasn't a non-gold contained solder replacement material for these high-Pb alloys, so they made them exempt from the RoHS restriced materials.
Time has passed however, and this exemption won't last forever. Engineers want to be prepared and begin testing the replacement materials which have been developed over the past few years. Unfortunately, there still isn't an industry accepted material available.
Creating new solder alloys is not easy and Indium's Dr. Andy Mackie explains why in his recent blog posting titled, "Elementary, My Dear Watson..."