The whiskers of your soldering

[Torpedo]

A mate at Auriculares posted the link to this article which may be of interest for you DIYers. Not being a DIYer myself I found it interesting nonetheless.

[Pars]

Very interesting article, particularly the Is Lead Really the Problem. Most of us DIY'ers do not use lead free solders regularly (at least I don't).

[cobra_kai]

I've actually never even seen lead free solder. Only used 60/40 or 63/37

[livewire]

Wow, that is interesting. Never heard of such agressive metallic / crystaline migration.

[ujamerstand]

[livewire]

HA!

Just make sure it's three mil of the urethane stuff.

That's what we used back when I was doing mil-spec rocket science stuff.

[RudeWolf]

RoHS is the main cause of whisker risk in EU. And the funny thing is that soldered parts makes a very small part of all lead waste in landfills. At least they could have let the small manufacturers free of this directive.

[Pars]

HA!

Just make sure it's three mil of the urethane stuff.

That's what we used back when I was doing mil-spec rocket science stuff.

As far as I know, the US military does not use RoHS stuff but leaded solders. Kevin or someone more knowledgeable might know differently. I wonder how this effects RSA clams of mil-spec, yet selling into EU countries?

[livewire]

Back when I was building stuff for Vishay's government contracts, there was no RoHS.

And yes, we most always used Kester 60/40, occasionally we used silver solder for brazing ultra low ohm shunts.

[spritzer]

The military is indeed exempt from the RoHS directive. To me the RoHS was decided by people who had no understanding of how this stuff works and just thought Pb=BAD!! Well that and a new way to moar moneyz...

[vvs_75]

Cool picture from wiki " whiskers growing out of surface-mount resistors"

Edited December 27, 2011 by vvs_75