Seeing this guy slowly come unglued as he tried to build a kit plane, on his own, in < 30 days, is one of the few things that make PBS worth watching.
Posted on 01/28/2015 9:11:12 AM PST by dennisw
Almost ever electronic device made today except some for the military have solder joints that contain no lead. This is an effort to save our groundwater and our public health. The fact that the lead has been generally replaced with silver or bismuth, both of which are actually greater health risks than lead, well we’ll leave that one for Ralph Nader. The longer-term trend is toward all-tin connections, anyway, but they don’t work very well, either.
Costs have gone up for computers with lead-free solder, mean time between failures (MTBF) has gone down (in this case down is bad) and reliability has suffered. Since we don’t fix things anymore, it’s hard to say whether your gizmo failed because of bad solder or not, but the problem is becoming worse as a greater percentage of total circuits in use have lead-free solder. The military and NASA were especially concerned, so they generally operate under waivers allowing lead solder in the gear on which our space program or national security supposedly depend.
If your PC lives long enough it will eventually be killed by what are called tin whiskers — single crystals that mysteriously grow from pure tin joints but not generally from tin-lead solder joints. Nobody knows how or why these whiskers grow and nobody knows how to stop them, except through the use of lead solder. Whiskers can start growing in a decade or a year or a day after manufacture. They can grow at up to nine millimeters per year. They grow in any atmosphere including a pure vacuum. They grow in any humidity condition. They just grow. And when they get long enough they either touch another joint, shorting out one or more connections, or they vaporize in a flash, creating a little plasma cloud
Tin whiskers can grow at up to nine millimeters per year. They grow in any atmosphere including a pure vacuum. They grow in any humidity condition. They just grow. And when they get long enough they either touch another joint, shorting out one or more connections, or they vaporize in a flash, creating a little plasma cloud that can carry for an instant hundreds of amps and literally blow your device to pieces.
Since 2006 we have been exclusively manufacturing soldered connections thousands of times more likely to create tin whiskers than older joints made with tin-lead solder. Because of the universal phase-in of the new solder technology and the fact that the solder technologies can’t reliably be mixed (old solders mess with new solder joints in the same device through simple outgassing) this means that it is practically impossible to use older, more reliable technology just for mission-critical (even life-critical) connections. So we’re all in this tin boat together.
bookmark
FORBES MAGAZINE
Why? so we’ll buy new ones! Duh!
CC
I was just talking to some HAMs about this over the last weekend. While lead core solder does exist, it’s increasingly difficult to find. Rosin core solder is decent for repairs, but for longevity, I don’t trust it.
I’ve got an old Kenwood transceiver with lead soldered everything, and it’s still going strong. Meanwhile, I’ve replaced caps on two Yaesu radios in the last 5 years.
Just like with handling firearms, you don’t go off having a meal or putting your fingers in your mouth after soldering. I hate how our government has grown to such nanny-state proportions that even something as simple and effective as lead has to be regulated out of everything from bullets to transformers. Stupid.
So do you have a solution that is better than gold?
Seeing this guy slowly come unglued as he tried to build a kit plane, on his own, in < 30 days, is one of the few things that make PBS worth watching.
Something to do with the laws of thermodynamics?
Well, they become obsolete eveery two years so we have to buy new ones anyway.
So, kind of like cotton candy?
I too, have an old Kenwood that is a masterpiece of workmanship. I also just purchased the new Yaesu Ft-991 and because of workmanship... the extended warranty.
I can still readily get 50/50 Tin lead solder at the plumbing supply.
Lead free is mandated for potable water since about 1986 but for hydronic heating, you can still use tin lead.
Another reason why, in some cases, paper records are superior to electronic.
Examples: voting ballots, family photos, medical records.
Interesting post. While searching for a replacement for a failing iMac I noticed eBay has several ‘sellers’ who offer re-soldering of high failure rate graphics cards.
I thought it was the magic “planned obsolescence” chips they put in electronics to ensure that they died just in time for you to buy another newer model. Samsung tried it and it backfired big time.
“I was just talking to some HAMs about this over the last weekend. While lead core solder does exist, it’s increasingly difficult to find. Rosin core solder is decent for repairs, but for longevity, I don’t trust it.
Two sepearate issues. Lead *bearing* solder is traditional. It has a rosin core as a flux, which lead-free solder *also* has. Flux is a requirement to properly “wet” the solder joint and to deoxidize same, both by floating oxides off the joint-in-progress and from the oxides that accum on the component leads during storage, handling etc; Flux is an absolute requirement for the capillary action that produces a “good looking” filleted or “wetted” solder joint. It is not the *core* of lead-bearing solder that is lead. Unless you are talking about *solid* lead solder which is only used in plumbing...and is now illegal to use in many/most states for all the obvious reasons.
“I’ve got an old Kenwood transceiver with lead soldered everything, and it’s still going strong. Meanwhile, I’ve replaced caps on two Yaesu radios in the last 5 years.”
There was a period in which Chinese caps were being produced that sucked. Computers, and especially LED screens died by the millions with these. DELL had a HUGE problem with bad Chinese caps, but that problem affected essentially everything. This is/was a bad cap problem, not a solder problem. That we replace almost anything electronic after a single-digit no of years sort of masked this issue, but it was industry-wide.
“Just like with handling firearms, you don’t go off having a meal or putting your fingers in your mouth after soldering. I hate how our government has grown to such nanny-state proportions that even something as simple and effective as lead has to be regulated out of everything from bullets to transformers. Stupid.except Fed”
True!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.