Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Homebrew PCBs

I have seen boards made with brass tube eyelets that were not plated for
easy solderability. These eyelets worked about 99% of the time or, in
other words, 99 out of 100 of these eyelets gave no trouble. But that
last one, the one in a hundred had a little corrosion on it and the
solder did not take. But it was covered with the solder so you could NOT
see that it was a bad connection. After some time (years?) the
mechanical connection that initially worked, accumulated some more
corrosion and began to give trouble. It was a real PITA to try to
troubleshoot a board that had all good components and absolutely no
visible indication of the real problem. I spent many, many hours working
on those boards.


I do NOT like boards made with brass eyelets or terminals unless those
brass components are heavily plated with SOLDER. Not a thin layer of tin
or some other "compatible" metal, but actual SOLDER.