suck my dong

Stay away from the lead free rubbish. 60/40, or 63/37 only!

It makes me laugh that so many laptop motherboard's get made up using this lead free solder rubbish and it melts when the GPU gets a bit too hot and causes them to fail. You'd think something which is so critical to use the correct type of solder which can handle the heat!!

I won't touch lead free or even that Eutetic 63/37 stuff.

60/40 stuff all day every day for me - cheap as chips and tried and tested.

Typical example of someone in a certain amount of "power" not knowing what they're on about.

teckniqs wrote:It makes me laugh that so many laptop motherboard's get made up using this lead free solder rubbish and it melts when the GPU gets a bit too hot and causes them to fail. You'd think something which is so critical to use the correct type of solder which can handle the heat!!

This is precisely it... So you go out and '' Buy a new one.''
There are some things you can do in life to supposedly protect the ''environment'' Lead free solder isn't it. Never use it, never will.

I don't think products made with lead free solder fail because they get too much heat. Lead free solder melts at a higher temperature than leaded. They probably fail due to cold solder joints, i.e. not enough heat when soldered - which will lead to the product failing if it suffers from high vibration, or PCB flexing among other things.

Tin whiskers.

True. Another reason to steer well clear.

shorty wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... ngineering

Good article. I particularly like this quote:

Whiskers' tips are atom-sharp. They will push through any coating, given time.

Wow.

Over on a vintage radio forum I visit there has been numerous talk about these whiskers, and it even goes on inside some of the old AF series metal Transistors from back in the 70s.

Leaded solder all the way for me. Flows nicely and the joints are shiny.

With lead free solder the final result was dull joints and a dry joint type of look.