Well lets put it this way if you are in Europe and you buy an electronic product its made with lead free solder unless its been on the shelf for a good long while. The EU recently mandated that all electronic devices be free of the substances they consider hazardous and lead just so happens to be one of them.
Yes there are problems with tin whiskering and yes the solder is more brittle and not very good when subject to flexing but this change happened quite a while ago and many companies have been getting up to speed on how to do this properly. The worst devices when using this lead free solder are the BGA's lets just be happy that there aren't any of those in the K3. Where I work we have to underfill our BGA devices. Essentially we solder them down then we seep superglue in underneath the part to help hold it onto the board. In our drop tests we were breaking balls and ending up with intermittent contact. As most gentlemen know having your balls broken is not a good experience! ;) Anyway tin whiskers are a problem but I have a feeling that "most" of the K3 is somewhat larger components which helps. But in most studies this has not really been figured to be that much of a real issue in industry. Perhaps in really tiny stuff (half mil and below) but I have a feeling that most of the K3 is going to be larger than that. Maybe some of the DSP's get down into that pitch size.... And as far as flexing... Don't bend the boards when you build the unit and don't drop it and you shouldn't have to worry about that too much. The chassis is designed around protecting the boards and isn't going to be placing undue stress on them. Granted leaded solder is better but its a thing of the past. Many companies are quite proficient at using it and I'm certain that the house that Elecraft has stuffing their parts has painstakingly gone over their solder profiles to maximize reliability. I know we have and that everyone in the industry was going through it with us. Granted there was a steep learning curve but now-a-days most companies have this pretty well nailed down. No worries man! On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 08:36 +0100, David Pratt wrote: > Do the K3 PC boards use lead free solder? > > I have just read the rather disturbing article in last Thursday's > Guardian newspaper that highlights a potential problem with whiskers > developing on the solder as well as the solder being more brittle and > likely to fail if the boards are flexed. > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/03/research.engineering > > There are evidently conferences currently being held to discuss the > problem to which Sun Microsystems and IBM are involved. This is worrying > reading and makes me wonder how long it will be before my K3 will fail. > > 73 _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
