rubbish solder?

John_P

Just fitted yet another set of pickups but what a pain - the iron is definitely very hot (I'm clumsy and it scars) but for some reason the solder I was using just didn't want to melt and when it did, it didn't flow as normal but formed little balls that only made a decent join after holding the iron in place for ages.

Is this just me needing to adapt to the newer lead free solder?  Or a bad batch or perhaps the iron was hot but not hot enough (50W a few weeks old).

axisus

More than good enough wattage. A bit of flux helps, I bought a small tin decades ago and I still have it. I tend to buy leaded solder now as you can get it in the UK. Picked it up off eBay. Are you trying to solder onto a pot? A big tip held suitably flat helps a lot.

octatonic

I don't like using lead free solder but it is obviously much safer to use it.

I would use a bit of flux and make sure you have a completely clean iron.

I use a different iron tip for lead free and lead solder.

They don't like each other.

ThePrettyDamned

I use lead solder, with a resin core (basically flux in it). It works so easily.

Lead free makes sense in a closed environment or massive jobs (amps?) but for soldering a couple of pots, open the window or even do it outside. I do it in the garage with an open door

John_P

Thanks chaps -  I'll order some   

The days of soldering daily are long behind me and for the odd time I need to do some, then it'll be worthi finding a supplier of leaded I think.

ecc83

I was involved in soldering on an "industrial" scale some years ago, just about when the lead free bllx came about.

I was told (by Weller techs) that PBfree fumes are more harmful than those off lead because the latter "drops" rapidly and does not get into the air very much  whereas the new stuff has more aggressive fluxes etc in it. You should not inhale either! But I am 68 and have been using lead solder virtually every day since I was 15 and in my 20's on the tellies it was...solder, fag, tea and a wad! Yes, 7 yrs ago I had cancers removed from my bladder but they were almost certainly caused by the fags! 

So, basic hygiene: Don't smoke and solder (well don't smoke period!) nor eat and wash hands afterward. Get a wee bench fan with filter if you like (but don't blow it over the kids!).

Solderability: When I started at B's all repairs had to done with Pbfree but the stuff I was given was shit! I got some of the production line solder and that was fine. I used a Weller Magnastat 50W with a #8 tip, the supplied #7 is bog useless on Pbfree. For heavier jobs, like foot switches  I used a short chunky #9 but you have to be careful with Nines, they run close to the ignition point of many common materials including cardboard!

So, if you are not selling stuff to Joe P use lead, you can still get it from CPC and Co. In any case there is still a lot of cable types and kit that MELTS at Pbfree temps!

Dave.

johnnyurq

Mind and properly clean and tin the iron's tip, this helps for lead free (which I hate and do not use) and is good practice in any case.

Not trying to tell granny to suck eggs but i see a lot of people using lead free forgetting to observe the basics.

But yeah leaded solder with Dave's good advice above is best.

OilCityPickups

I've converted to hippy-solder because I sell stuff to you guys .... and the Nazis in Brussels reckon you'll sniff my pickups ... (or perhaps suck em if it floats yer boat) and get brain damaged
Anyhow ... the secret is a bloody hot iron (400+ degrees) and using silver/tin/zinc mix solder with built in flux. The miracle ingredient is the silver which lowers the melting point and makes the stuff flow better. Of course it also makes the chuffing stuff four times the price of conventional lead based solder. Not all hippy-solder contains silver so look for the ones that advertise high silver content ...
If you want small Quant-titties try the Maplin stuff. Unfortunately it doesn't come in the industrial sized rolls I use

ICBM

Agreed on the silver-content stuff. It's not quite as good as proper leaded solder, but it's miles better than the normal lead-free crap, which is little more than pure tin and tends to produce 'cold' joints even when it's actually hot enough. It just doesn't flow or 'wet' properly.

Interestingly, if you add the silvered solder to non-silvered, the silver flows into the whole lot and makes it much easier to get a good joint. I was working on an amp the other day which had clearly been built with lead-free, non-silver stuff and it was a bugger to even unsolder anything with a high-power Weller iron, but add a bit of fresh silver solder first and bingo… instantly easy.

randomhandclaps

The flux in the smoke of lead-free is more harmful than that in leaded solder.  The crackdown on using leaded wasn't actually to do with inhaling lead (as the boiling point of lead is 1749 degree) or even touching it as test showed solder workers still have well below dangerous levels of lead build up in there system - we were getting more from exhaust fumes.  It was due to the amount of electrical goods that end up in landfill gradually poisoning the ground.

I made a switch about 5 years ago.  The silver stuff (which is actually quite fairly priced in Maplins) is far better and gives you a nicer looking joint.  One of the issues I think people find with lead-free is the balance between heat and skill.  The iron needs to be hotter for lead-free.  If you are in good practice and do a lot of soldering, you pin the joint and the solder is made fairly quickly meaning the extra heat is not a problem.  However if you only do an odd bit of soldering and you are trying to fix a wobbly joint with a shaky soldering hand there is a tendency to overdo the joint and in doing so heat it too much.

OilCityPickups

The problem comes in making huge solder joints like pickup covers ... you are getting close to the limits of damaging internal components with lead solders ... for those who don't so it every day and have 'got their eye in' ... lead free is another ball game ... and it becomes much more difficult for the amateur to do a proper job.

An interesting side effect of 'lead free' is that as you use a hotter iron, it becomes easier and more reliable to solder to 'solderable'  coating winding wire. Suppose there has to be some plus side.

By real beef is that hand wound pickups are not going to find their way into landfill ... at least one would hope not therefore why in f--k are we bound by the same daft rules as a cheap Chinese TV set?

ICBM

The whole landfill thing is a red herring anyway. If it's a problem, then it's a problem when all the electronics gear manufactured with leaded solder in the last sixty-plus years goes to landfill - and especially all that from about the last twenty to thirty years, the very gear which is now being replaced by modern RoHS/WEEE-regulation stuff - changing the rules for new stuff won't fix that. The only way to do so is to properly sort the rubbish before it goes into the landfill and recycle the electronics separately - as it should be anyway, the materials have value - and then it doesn't matter if the new stuff contains lead as well!

Idiot politicians fixing the wrong problem with the wrong solution as usual, in other words. But proper rubbish sorting - which means doing it thoroughly by *employing* people at the landfill sites, as well as trying to make people do it when it's uplifted - is expensive, so they don't want to do that…

randomhandclaps

Totally agree with that.  As usual it a distraction of tackling the problem from the wrong end.  

ThePrettyDamned

I have seen people going through landfill before, stripping pcb's from electronics. I remember asking why, thinking they were barmy, and they said they sell the components on (presumably for recycling as resistors and caps are cheap anyway).

So it's neat knowing there are folks out there who *will* see the value. I'm keeping my (probably) buggered ibanez cf7 for spare resistors, some pots with awesome push-lock function and even the battery pack is reusable, if I ever wanted to fix another pedal.

ICBM

I suspect these landfill people are selling what they collect to bulk recyclers. Scrap electronics contain significant quantities of valuable metals, up to and including gold - not huge, but enough to make recycling worthwhile if you do it on a big enough scale and don't have to spend a lot of money sorting the PCBs from the other rubbish. I saw a TV article a while back about a company which does it - from memory they were getting something like 1Kg of gold, 20Kg of silver and some much larger quantity of copper, plus other metals, from 12 tonnes of scrap. (Those figures may be wrong but you get the idea.) Gold is actually used internally in a lot of chips, if I remember right - more so than in things like connector contacts.

ThePrettyDamned

ICBM;106015" said:

I suspect these landfill people are selling what they collect to bulk recyclers. Scrap electronics contain significant quantities of valuable metals, up to and including gold - not huge, but enough to make recycling worthwhile if you do it on a big enough scale and don't have to spend a lot of money sorting the PCBs from the other rubbish. I saw a TV article a while back about a company which does it - from memory they were getting something like 1Kg of gold, 20Kg of silver and some much larger quantity of copper, plus other metals, from 12 tonnes of scrap. (Those figures may be wrong but you get the idea.) Gold is actually used internally in a lot of chips, if I remember right - more so than in things like connector contacts.

Yeah - I actually stripped a motherboard of gold in my degree once for a laugh and got a few grams out, including chips etc.

Got it for free from freecycle.

GuitarMonkey

ICBM said:

Gold is actually used internally in a lot of chips, if I remember right - more so than in things like connector contacts.

Isn't it used for connecting the chip itself to the pins?

ICBM

GuitarMonkey said:

Isn't it used for connecting the chip itself to the pins?

I think so, and possibly connections between the transistors in the chip itself too - not sure.

OilCityPickups

Following my natural inclination to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, I call my lead free iron 'Neil' after the character in the young ones
My main pickup winding machine is called Gloria ...

NervousJohn

ICBM;106146" said:

GuitarMonkey said:



Isn't it used for connecting the chip itself to the pins?





I think so, and possibly connections between the transistors in the chip itself too - not sure.

I'm a bit rusty on IC manufacture but from memory gold is used for bond wires. The chips themselves are printed onto a wafer. Older processors used more than the modern ones do.

There's also gold (plate) on PCB pads and connectors, especially for RF where losses really matter.

And lead free solder is horrible stuff. I've known techs develop health issues from inhaling the fumes. Lead/tin just gives you a headache.