[sdiy] Dumbest Mistakes with Synths Contest Anyone?

[Seb Francis]

I had the same experience ... my friend bought some Maplin solder and it 
just didn't flow, regardless of how hot the iron was.  Better (= more 
expensive) lead-free solder contains some silver (e.g. 4%) which helps.  
And also the type of flux makes a difference.  But personally I'm in no 
hurry to move over to lead-free.  There's certainly no problem buying 
leaded solder for the foreseeable future (unless you shop at Maplins!)

As far as soldering at high temperatures goes - I work pretty much all 
the time (with leaded solder) at 375C which is quite hot but is fine as 
long as you're fairly quick - and working at this temperature allows you 
to solder quicker anyway.

Seb



Dave Kendall wrote:
> Hi Ingo.
>
> The solder was Maplin's own brand - 99.3% tin, with 0.7% copper.
> It just didn't seem to want to flow freely onto the solder terminals of the
> 3.5mm jacks I was using, either for tinning, or soldering.
> I've got a temp controlled solder station, but even maxed out at 425c it
> still didn't seem to want to play ball, and often caused the plastic jack
> housings to start to melt before the solder flowed properly, and that
> temperature seems dangerously high for ICs - I could be wrong there, but it
> doesn't seem like a good idea to run the iron that hot if you don't really
> need to. 
>
> A lot of what I'm doing these days is on perfboard, where the solder
> connection needs to be mechanically strong as well as electrically sound, so
> I just don't trust the tin stuff - I've had a few dry or crappy joints show
> up, so until the Brussels politicos ban it completely, I'll stick with the
> lead/tin stuff ;-)
>
> Oh well. I've got a few reels of lead/tin solder stashed away, and life
> seems easier, quicker and better when using that :-)
>
> cheers,
>
> Dave  
>
> on 5/8/06 10:53, Ingo Debus at debus at cityweb.de wrote:
>
>   
>> Am 04.08.2006 um 19:47 schrieb Dave Kendall:
>>
>>     
>>> Working on some jack sockets a year or two ago, trying to get some
>>> of that
>>> crappy lead free solder to work, gave the iron a frustrated bang on
>>> the
>>> bench - a blob flew up and went splat on my eyeball. Hurt like hell.
>>> I'd worked for a while years before with an eye team, and
>>> remembered that as
>>> long as it doesn't penetrate you *should* be OK, so a tiny little
>>> bit of my
>>> brain was not panicking and trying to be sensible.
>>> The rest of me was jumping up and down and yelling, completely and
>>> utterly
>>> freaked out. There was a little silver solder star right in the
>>> middle of
>>> the eye. Come to think of it, with hindsight, I would probably have
>>> got
>>> several points for style in an ABBA convention.
>>>
>>> Another good reason not to use lead free solder......
>>>       
>> Ouch! Reminds me to get safety goggles. I wear glasses, but I often
>> put them off for soldering work.
>>
>> Do you remember what kind of leadfree solder this was? The stuff I
>> tried so far just solders fine with my trusty old WTCP soldering iron
>> and a 7 tip, like conventional leaded solder.
>>
>> Ingo
>>     
>
>
>
>