The latest on tin whiskers in lead-free soldering?

[Peter]

A lot was said about this c. 2005 but the whole discussion seems to
have died down.

Here in the UK, most people have now moved to lead free solder. A lot
used the Control & Monitoring Equipment ROHS exemption, which is valid
till 2017 and this protects you fine if you sell direct to many small
customers, but if you have big customers you can't use it because most
big firm customers are bullying their supplier base with surveys
demanding a confirmation of total compliance on ROHS & REACH...

At work we tested about 30 hand solders and all but two were absolute
crap. I cannot see who could use the others - except maybe with a
*very* hot iron e.g. 400C+ and zero quality control. The two which
worked both contained silver (SAC solder). One was GBP 45/0.5kg (5x
more than normal solder) and the other, which is actually pretty good,
is GBP 65 (from Almit in Japan). Per product, the cost of the hand
solder is negligible however. Neither of the two flows well; they do
good joints but basically the solders stays where you put it. It
doesn't like to flow into a gap e.g. if soldering a TO220-style
package onto a PCB by the tab on it.

But it is in SMT reflow soldering that the whisker troubles happened.
I read the Swatch story; obviously they found a solution eventually.

I wonder if perhaps several factors helped:

1) The silver stabilises the solder and stops whisker forming. I found
most reflow soldering is done with SAC solder, despite its hugely
bigger cost.

2) The industry stopped the quest towards ever finer TSOP package pin
spacing. We use 0.65mm pitch which is probably OK. The really dense
stuff went to BGA which is very well spaced out.

3) Much electronics is consumer stuff and nobody gives a **** if it
packs up after a few years...

The military retain their exemption for ever, presumably for a good
reason.

The problem I have is that out products routinely run for 20 years, in
cabinets, at an elevated temp, perhaps +50C.

Any views?

 

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[Robert Baer]

A lot was said about this c. 2005 but the whole discussion seems to
have died down.

Here in the UK, most people have now moved to lead free solder. A lot
used the Control& Monitoring Equipment ROHS exemption, which is valid
till 2017 and this protects you fine if you sell direct to many small
customers, but if you have big customers you can't use it because most
big firm customers are bullying their supplier base with surveys
demanding a confirmation of total compliance on ROHS& REACH...

At work we tested about 30 hand solders and all but two were absolute
crap. I cannot see who could use the others - except maybe with a
*very* hot iron e.g. 400C+ and zero quality control. The two which
worked both contained silver (SAC solder). One was GBP 45/0.5kg (5x
more than normal solder) and the other, which is actually pretty good,
is GBP 65 (from Almit in Japan). Per product, the cost of the hand
solder is negligible however. Neither of the two flows well; they do
good joints but basically the solders stays where you put it. It
doesn't like to flow into a gap e.g. if soldering a TO220-style
package onto a PCB by the tab on it.

But it is in SMT reflow soldering that the whisker troubles happened.
I read the Swatch story; obviously they found a solution eventually.

I wonder if perhaps several factors helped:

1) The silver stabilises the solder and stops whisker forming. I found
most reflow soldering is done with SAC solder, despite its hugely
bigger cost.

2) The industry stopped the quest towards ever finer TSOP package pin
spacing. We use 0.65mm pitch which is probably OK. The really dense
stuff went to BGA which is very well spaced out.

3) Much electronics is consumer stuff and nobody gives a **** if it
packs up after a few years...

The military retain their exemption for ever, presumably for a good
reason.

The problem I have is that out products routinely run for 20 years, in

* ---------- our -------------^

cabinets, at an elevated temp, perhaps +50C.

Any views?

SAC has a higher MP than Sn96.3Ag3.7, and i understand that it has
soldering problems, some of which you allude to.
Those higher processing temps degrade everything..

The "plain" tin/silver alloy mentioned above seems to flow as easily
as original tin/lead (aka 60/40 or thereabouts) and i have made zero
adjustments to iron temp.
Reflow also works like a charm.

 

[Robert Baer]

You need a military product or two.

But even that may not help - it's getting hard to find non-ROHS
components.

Joe Gwinn

What diff? The arts have so little solder on them that machs nicht.

 

[rickman]

Some more current info on tin and zinc whiskers.
<http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/>

I thought the Toyota incident was relatively recent. But looking at the
NASA paper I see the car was a 2005 model. It just took five years to
get the info to NASA... or maybe it took nearly five years for the
whisker to form?

 

[Peter]

<http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/2011-NASA-GSFC-whisker-failure-app-sensor.pdf>
It was a 2003 Toyota Camry. The incident happened in 2005. The
report was commission by the Dept of Transportation in 2010, and was
completed in 2011. The full report is at:
<http://www.nhtsa.gov/UA>
<http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nvs/pdf/NASA-UA_report.pdf>
Looks like any potential difference over 2.6v will form whiskers.
Amazing. See Pg 25.

This is scary and it seems that nothing has actually changed, and all
that the EU has achieved is to trash long term product life.

I do find this hard to believe...

 

[Peter]

Looks like any potential difference over 2.6v will form whiskers.
Amazing. See Pg 25.

The 2.6V is actually the voltage needed to break down the oxide layer
which forms on the whiskers and which stops them shorting things out.

The whiskers form without any power applied to the component(s).

 

[Syd Rumpo]

Some more current info on tin and zinc whiskers.
<http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/>

It's a bit like the first gulf war when we saw on the TV news a laser
guided bomb blow up a bunker by flying down the ventilation shaft. The
same one, over and over and over again.

Every time this comes up, these same pictures come out. If whiskers
really are such a problem why are there not many hundreds of pictures?

FWIW, I've been using lead-free for many years for other than ROHS
reasons, and once you're used to the difference, it seems easy and reliable.

cheers

 

[Peter]

Every time this comes up, these same pictures come out. If whiskers
really are such a problem why are there not many hundreds of pictures?

Googling suggests that the issue of whiskers shorting out component
*leads* may have been solved by using some gold palladium etc plating
on them. Maxim suggests that this may be standard on their chips so I
guess others have done something similar.

What is a worry is that, immediately post the ROHS shafting of
electronic manufacturing back c. 2005, a lot of chips went to tin-only
plating on the leads, and this WILL grow whiskers. They grow up to 1mm
per year. They grow rapidly in vacuum which is why this has been a
huge issue in space and high altitude (unpressurised) applications.

But I see nothing having obviously changed on whiskers growing out of
lead-free solder *joints*. There is a suggestion that SAC (silver
loaded) solder suffers less from whiskers, but it's only a degree,
nowhere near an elimination.

There is one conformal coating, Arathane 5750, which stops whiskers
growing. It is very expensive (though probably insignificant on a
per-PCB basis), very hard to get here in the UK, but most importantly
conformal coatings are very expensive to apply. I have used them for
many years, and they are a pain in the ****. You have to let the PCBs
dry off, etc. We use CC on PCBs which have little toroidal
transformers as it helps secure the windings in place. But it cannot
be used on PCBs that have connectors, or mounting holes through which
you are expecting earthing continuity, etc, unless you do fancy
masking.

My guess is that anybody using pure-tin-plated chips ought to stick
some Arathane 5750 onto the pins, at least. A quick spray through a
template would do it.

Researching this leads to a really sh*t realisation that the EU has
shafted all of us, and the big corporations (with the US ones behaving
in the most disgusting manner when it comes to screwing suppliers)
having a big play in it...

 

[Phil Allison]

"Jeff Liebermann = lying radio ham cunthead "

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

** Yes it FUCKING is - you brainless, bullshitting TWAT !!

1. Whenever the evidence SHOULD be there and is NOT.

2. When there is simply no proper supporting evidence at all.

FYI:

The NUMBER ONE proof that something is 100% BULLSHIT

- is that nothing *credible* makes it fact.

Idiot.



.... Phil

 

[Syd Rumpo]

On 28/07/2013 09:59, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

Enlighten me please. Why would you want to use RoHS solder other than
for ecological reasons? I can possibly see it if you are using very
dense PCB traces, because the non-wetting properties of RoHS solders
will reduce bridging. What other benefits did I miss?

Higher softening and melting point for high temperature work. ROHS
actually made things better in that regard as the Sn/Pb solder on
component pins would often need to be removed before use. It doesn't
take much Pb contamination to lower the melting point and weaken the
solder joint, particularly with the small amount of solder used with
surface mount.

Sometimes Sn/Pb solder is used to deliberately contaminate a joint to
aid component removal. This solder is kept in a locked cabinet.

I've never seen a tin whisker in real life, and have spent many an hour
looking at solder joints through a microscope.

Cheers

 

[Peter]

On a sunny day (Sun, 28 Jul 2013 12:17:03 +0100) it happened Syd Rumpo

You may not have noticed them,
AF118 was a common failure in TV vidicon cameras input stage:
http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/anecdote/af114-transistor/index.html

Scares me!

I have just done hours of reading on this.

One way to guarantee getting loads of whiskers is to plate *bright*
tin onto some substrate and then compress the substrate.

In that "1960s transistor" case above that is probably what happened.
They started with a tin plated sheet and pressed it into the
transistor casing, which compressed the tin coating inside it, causing
massive whisker growth.

So that may be an extreme case.

I don't think bright tin has been plated onto IC leads. The tin I see
is normally dull grey. That is just as well since the leads get bent
into shape *after* plating.

Also tin plated IC leads go back decades before ROHS, with no reported
problems AFAIK. So maybe the problem was known in the industry for a
long time, which is what my reading does confirm.

The ROHS-related problems would be to do with the solder used, rather
than component leads.

I don't think component leads were ever plated with tin-lead, were
they? Can you even do that? You would have to solder bath immerse them
I think, which isn't going to be done with an IC lead frame. That will
always be plated, and I don't think you can plate tin-lead as such.

 

[Fred Abse]

This is scary and it seems that nothing has actually changed, and all that
the EU has achieved is to trash long term product life.

Maybe that's what they wanted...

 

[Fred Abse]

Mostly, I end up buying solder on
eBay at about half list price.

Traceability?

 

[Fred Abse]

It's a bit like the first gulf war when we saw on the TV news a laser
guided bomb blow up a bunker by flying down the ventilation shaft. The
same one, over and over and over again.

Every time this comes up, these same pictures come out. If whiskers
really are such a problem why are there not many hundreds of pictures?

There are links from the above reference that explain in detail the
difficulty of seeing, let alone photographing, whiskers. Many are missed
simply because of incorrect illumination.

FWIW, I've been using lead-free for many years for other than ROHS
reasons, and once you're used to the difference, it seems easy and
reliable.

Explain "seems easy and reliable". What products? voltages? environmental
conditions? lifetime? soldering process?

 

[Syd Rumpo]

On 28/07/2013 14:44, Fred Abse wrote:

Explain "seems easy and reliable". What products? voltages? environmental
conditions? lifetime? soldering process?

All that work for free? No.

Cheers

 

[Fred Abse]

On 28/07/2013 14:44, Fred Abse wrote:



All that work for free? No.

Cheers

IOW, you can't...

 

[Syd Rumpo]

IOW, you can't...

Well, I'm not fundamentally dishonest, and I don't have a vested
interest. I have never once seen a tin whisker under my 20x stereo
inspection microscope in many years of using lead free solders. I think
the problem is greatly exaggerated and probably insignificant compared
to other soldering issues. I suspect that, because lead free is touted
as 'green' or 'European' it provokes a knee jerk negative response in many.

But I'm not going to write a book. Have you seen any real tin whiskers
yourself?

Cheers

 

[Peter]

Well, I'm not fundamentally dishonest, and I don't have a vested
interest. I have never once seen a tin whisker under my 20x stereo
inspection microscope in many years of using lead free solders. I think
the problem is greatly exaggerated and probably insignificant compared
to other soldering issues. I suspect that, because lead free is touted
as 'green' or 'European' it provokes a knee jerk negative response in many.

But I'm not going to write a book. Have you seen any real tin whiskers
yourself?

Having done a lot of reading, I think the industry has got away with
it, due to a number of factors:

1) The whiskers need an elevated temp to grow well, say +60C

2) The whiskers need a reduced pressure to grow well (aircraft and
satellite apps)

3) The whiskers won't grow on component leads unless *bright* (smooth)
tin plated, which most aren't (but some definitely ARE)

4) Ref 3) what really helps is if the surface is under compression
(concave curve e.g. the *inside* of a transistor case)

5) SAC solder doesn't seem to have a big problem with whiskers because
the surface finish is very dull

6) IC lead pitch miniaturisation stopped c. 0.65mm pitch (went to BGA
for high lead count packages)

7) Very few products are going to fail within say a 2 year warranty

8) IF SOMETHING FAILS IT GETS CHUCKED AWAY AND NOBODY LOOKS FOR
WHISKERS!

9) The vast majority of electronic mfg is consumer stuff which gets
chucked away after a few years at most

So there you are...

I *would* be concerned about elevated temps and TSOP packages, in
industrial products which are expected to work for years. Conformal
coatings can be used there, or just use leaded solder and nobody will
notice

The conformal coating I mentioned earlier is difficult to store (6
month shelf life and a crazy price) and extremely hazardous if warmed
up.

Does anybody make SMT solder paste with say 2-3% lead? I guess it must
exist because the military demand 2-3% lead.

 

[tm]

Researching this leads to a really sh*t realisation that the EU has
shafted all of us, and the big corporations (with the US ones behaving
in the most disgusting manner when it comes to screwing suppliers)
having a big play in it...

You are totally full of shit. Totally!.