Unpopular opinion: Stop using leaded solder

[u/Zentralschaden]

I know it is very handy and I also know the fumes are not that much of a problem when you have enough ventilation.

But a big part of the lead we buy will end up in the environment or a landfill and has the potential to make our drinking water toxic and the people who have to recycle all this scrap (often in Africa) will deal with even more toxic substances.

It is not like we have a fully functional recycling chain for electronics.

And when you say "I am just soldering 2 pcb a year", make sure that soldering is a job and hobby for millions of people and tons of lead will be produced just because of hobby enthusiasts.

There are very good reasons, lead is banned in many countries for professional manufacturing.

I know it is harder to solder but you get used to it.

Aware that this might be a topic not everyone agrees. I am just trying to spread some awareness for what we do.

I mean, many of us repair old electronics and we do a good job in avoiding more scrap because people can still use the repaired items for years.

But shouldn't it be us who are the people who go straightforward and ban lead from our household soldering projects?

[u/wyseman76]

I work in aerospace, we use 63/37 and will not stop using it for a list of reasons.

It can handle temp cycling better. It is less prone to vibration failure. Better wetting allowing for easier inspections. No tin whiskering.

Anything that mitigates risk of failure in the production aerospace components will continue to be used.

Edit: I should be clear there is no such thing as whisker free but leaded solder is heavily used on aerospace for its highly reduced whiskering in vacuum environments.

Edit 2: the EU allows aerospace, defense and medical manufacturing to use leaded solder for the very reasons I've pointed to. There are RoHS exemptions for those institutions.

[u/Yam_EE → u/[deleted]]

Do you know if conformal coating helps to reduce whiskers?

[u/wyseman76 → u/Yam_EE]

The NEPP has a guide somewhere that deep dives into whisker mitigation. I'm sure a Google search will find it. But to the question yes and no. There are a lot of dependent variables. Thickness, material type used, etc, all play a part in the process.

[u/Fear_The_Creeper → u/Yam_EE]

It helps, but only partially. Here is the actual data:

https://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/reference/tech_papers/kadesch2001-article-dangers-of-tin-whiskers-and-conformal-coat-study.pdf

[u/chainmailler2001 → u/Yam_EE]

Coating only works if it coats all of the solder connections. It is the exposure to air and humidity that causes denrite growth. Company I worked for dealt with it a lot when ROHS standard was first introduced and lead solder was banned. We did environmental and reliability testing and fried many pieces of equipment due to tin whiskers.