Re:Tin Whiskers are fact (Score 1)

As designers of a small volume specialty hand held device that is safety related and that we want to last a long time with high reliability I can tell you this sort of stuff keeps us awake at night. Those of us working in medical and safety related fields (read small volume markets) have to deal with the fact that components are being driven by the mass consumer market. As has been pointed out, even if your product class is exempt, available components are ROHS. And we're using several BGA chips with tiny clearances, and SMT connectors with .3mm pitch. Does conformal coating solve the problem? I can say we have had bigger problems getting good assembly with lead-free processes.