Quote Originally Posted by duncan303 View Post
I assumed my oil was being reprocessed recycled. How typically stupid. I can be so niave sometimes!
I'm not even 100% sure that burning it at high temp's is good enough. Think of all the metallic contamination that's probably in there (especially if it came from a worn out motor). The guys at the HAZMAT shop said the costs involved with actually recycling oil are way too high, and you basically end up with the same problems anyways.

You lot over there are generaly a couple of years ahead of us, we (europeans) are just starting to deal with recycling but only through threats of massive fines and thats our governement being fined by some foreigner called Brussells!.
I don't know about that. The gov't still hasn't switched over to lb-free soldering practices yet. In fact, it was only touched on in that micro-mini-circuit card repair class I went to last year. And if you look at all of the boards coming out of SE Asia these days, practically every one of them has lb-free markings on them.

I air out the aromatic organic solvents as much for my own sanity as for the environment
And again, as far as the HAZMAT guys are concerned, most commercially available products these days can be aired out without much worry. The main concern was the ozone depleting stuff (freon, etc). Good luck finding any of that these days.

As far as the cross-contamination goes...In the shop, I've got 2 sets of stations, one set for lb-full and one set for lb-free. If I get any lb contamination on the lb-free tools, those parts go over to the lb-full station. So basically, when I need to buy stuff, I buy it for the lb-free work, and move it over when I screw up
And, the instructors at that school said if you get lead into a lb-free environment, things get all screwy. You end up having to pump a load of heat into the product to get it to do anything for you...and by that time, you probably end up melting the PCB