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Does wisker form inside semiconductor also or do they use metals immune to that?
Yes they do but slower. In the past gold was used for wires from terminal to pads. Gold as far as i know is not so subceptible to form whiskers. But gold is expensive and now they use copper instead of gold.
Does anybody from Germany know where I can still buy leaded solder? Unfortunately I forgot to order a lifetime supply while it was still available
This is very surprising to me. I had no idea that certain conductors had some kind of (stochastic, according to robomartin) built-in time delayed short circuit mechanism that will, without question, manifest itself given enough time. Like some kind of natural electronics prank.
If you were feeling particularly cynical, you might wonder whether this phenomenon has been incorporated into shipping products, such manufacturers would be assured that their goods would fail shortly after the warranty expired.
I have seen a number of similar comments on this thread. Manufacturers were dragged kicking and screaming --they were forced, through legislation-- to switch to lead-free solder. Nobody --nobody-- in manufacturing wanted this. This idea that going lead-free was a conspiracy by manufacturers to have their products fail more often is completely false.
One of the most well-known episodes of mass failures due to tin whiskers happened when the Swatch Group (watch manufacturer) converted to lead-free solder. They had so many failures that they ended-up requesting an exception from RoHS [0].
As I said in another comment. The problem with RoHS as it pertains to tin whisker failures is that we will likely never know what percentage of failing consumer, commercial and industrial products end-up in the landfill because of the forced and premature transition to this lead-free solder. If one studies that history of the transition it is easy to see it includes many companies clamoring for years of additional studies before making the change. We went into it by force in 2006 without having had full data on potential issues.
At the time I was manufacturing expensive FPGA-based real time image processing boards. I made the decision to stop shipping product to Europe.
My decision was based on a very simple reality: I still had to honor a years-long warranty in Europe and could not include any clause stating that we could not be responsible for a government-mandated technology known to have serious problems that could lead to failures at any time, even very early on. Companies were forced through mandate and given absolutely no immunity from the very real tin whisker problem. I did not ship a product into Europe for two or three years. We were busy enough everywhere else, so I did not care one bit. We actually had European customers who needed the hardware buy through a US-based path and then hand carry into the EU through whatever means. Not my problem.
[0] https://hlinstruments.com/RoHS_articles/A-1018_Swatch.pdf
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My mid-1980s digital alarm clock came with a full schematic. Can you imagine that today?
Actually, yes I could imagine that quite easily. Just buy "hackable" products which do that as a matter of course. A digital multi-purpose device with an alarm-clock form factor would not even be especially complicated to make.
Of course nowadays something that simple could be a chip the size of a rice grain, power included. So that's something :)
It really is an amazing phenomena. Effectively atoms of tin are moving from the tin out to the end of the whisker. We spent a week talking about whiskering(sp?) in my materials science class at USC because it was such a big deal in the EE world. Prior to that class my world view was that only electrons could travel through metal, only to find that metal can travel through metal too! Locally at NASA Ames they had an e…
> that metal can travel through metal too! I recommend watching clips of mercury amalgamations forming (nile red has some great videos on youtube). There is something about it that is both disturbing and beautiful to me.
Does anybody from Germany know where I can still buy leaded solder? Unfortunately I forgot to order a lifetime supply while it was still available
I ordered on ebay, sold by a vendor from another EU country that cares less about the regulations.
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The trick is not to end up inhaling or eating the solder in its solid state. This is actually quite difficult to avoid, as cleaning the tip of your iron will create lots of tiny solder balls that fly everywhere and can persist in your environment. Personally I would say that in hobbyist electronics tin whiskers are the least of your concerns when it comes to the reliability of the devices you’re making. I wouldn’t ri…
Agreed. This, not lead fumes, is the real danger of leaded solder. You can't hand solder reliably without cleaning the iron, but both of the common cleaning techniques (damp sponge and brass wool) inevitably break the soldier into tiny balls, which bounce and roll all over the place. They can get caught in clothes, and from there they might end up getting into food. With the safe dose for lead being zero, I don't thi…
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The sky is not falling in large part because the transition to lead-free solder was simultaneous with the transition to electronic devices that are not repaired and which frequently have a lifetime not much longer than their warranty time. Most current electronic devices are dumped much earlier than when they would fail due to the tin whiskers. Many consumer electronic devices made 50 years ago are still usable witho…
Consumer electronics used to break down all the time 50 years ago. Metal whiskers are not even close to being relevant when other factors impact reliability and durability to a far greater extent.
Citation required
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The boiling point of lead is 1749 °C (3180 °F).
The boiling point of water is 100 °C, and yet my shower seems to produce an awful lot of steam despite not being anywhere close to that.
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Consumer electronics used to break down all the time 50 years ago. Metal whiskers are not even close to being relevant when other factors impact reliability and durability to a far greater extent.
They used to break down and they could and were repaired. Nowadays if something breaks it goes in the garbage can. I had an extension cable which died staying in the basement for a year. When i opened it to check the reason i was shocked. It looked like a spider net made of dust but this was metal.
Sounds like you should unplug it before you open it up.