1914 Journal of Environmental Protection and Ecology 13, No 3A, 1914–1920 (2012) Ecology – ishery * For correspondence. advanced Trends in design of lead-free alTernaTive for TradiTional free machining Brasses D. ZIVKOVIC a *, E. BEGOVIC b , A. KOSTOV c , S. EKINOVIC b a Technical Faculty, University of Belgrade, 19 210 Bor, Serbia E-mail: dzivkovic@tf.bor.ac.rs b Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,University of Zenica, Zenica, Bosnia and Hertzegovina c Mining and Metallurgy Institute, Bor, Serbia abstract. actual request for environmentally friendly materials in electric and electronic equipment has been released recently to some common metal materials with wide application in different areas, such as brasses, steels, etc. Therefore, some advanced trends are actual nowadays in the investiga- tions of lead-free alternative for traditional free machining brasses and the review of current efforts in that ield is presented in this paper. Keywords: lead-free materials, free machining brasses, environmentally friendly materials. AIMS AND BACKGROUND Presence of lead is considered to have negative ecological impacts due to its high toxic effect. Therefore, last decades brought new requirements in production of widely used materials, the so-called eco- or hazardous-free materials, for most of which is typical to be lead-free materials 1 . The use and production of lead-free materials were deined according to main EU legislative in this ield – the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive (RoHS) (Refs 2–5), which bans the use of certain hazardous substances (such as lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and some polybrominated lame- retardants) in different types of materials. Besides solder materials, electronic and electric materials, which were inves- tigated recently and designed among lead-free materials, some traditional, widely used materials, such as brasses and steels, has been also put under environmental scrutiny 6 . Following the global trend and the proclaimed guidelines – to restrict the use of lead, the technologies for manufacturing reliable different lead-free traditional, standard alloys were rapidly developing recently 3,6 .