Soldering (see RoHS), has led to a change in formulation of both solders and fluxes. Water-soluble non-rosin-based fluxes have been increasingly used since the 1980s so that soldered boards can be cleaned with water or water-based cleaners. This eliminates hazardous solvents from the production environment, and from factory effluents. Those regulations have also reduced the use of lead based solders, and caused the melting temperatures of solders in use to increase by up to . "Hot-bar reflow" is a selective soldering process where two pre-fluxed, solder coated parts are heated with heating element (called a thermode) to a sufficient temperature to
Mechanical–electrical analogies using a topological network diagram even when components needing a distributed element analysis are present. In the electrical domain, a transmission line, a basic distributed element component, can be included in the model with the introduction of the additional element of electrical length. The transmission line is a special case because it is invariant along its length and hence the full geometry need not be modelled. Another way of dealing with distributed elements is to use a finite element analysis whereaby the distributed element is approximated by a large number of small lumped elements. Just such an approach was used