Many die cast items of the 1940's back to the introduction of the process
suffered from "tin pest" where just sitting around at room temperature they'd
crumble over time. The right balance of metals in the alloy made it stable.
Same goes for solders. Lead made the casting alloy and solder melt at lower
temperatures and kept the tin from oxidizing or doing any of the other weird
shiznit tin can do, like growing crystalline "whiskers" that can short out
electronics.
On Monday, April 6, 2020, 1:46:11 PM MDT, Peter Blodow <p.blo...@dreki.de>
wrote:
Gentlemen,
tin happens to stand near to the transition metals in the periodic
system and thus tends to slowly turn from metallic (conductive) to
crystaline (noc-conductive) as time goes on. At room temperature this
takes very long, say 10 years or more, at low temperature faster,
especially below -20 or -30 degrees Celsius. I had such a problem with
my refrigerator where the temperature sensor or its plug developed high
resistance, freezing all the contents to -10 degrees over night. A
temporary means to fix this is to waggle the connectors from time to
time. Napoleons soldiers in Russia in 1812 had tin buttons on their
uniform trousers and jackets which turned into crumbs in siberian
winter, a great problem for the great emperor.
Always chose galvanized golden pins and connectors!
Peter
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