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.

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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...

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

Edited December 27, 201114 yr by vvs_75