Lead-free solder, does it really suck?

E

Elledan

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2010
Joined
Oct 18, 2001
Messages
15,913
While reading a topic on Slashdot today (accusations of bad PS3 solder joints leading to failures), a few people were ranting again on how much lead-free solder sucks, how hard it is to use and that the resulting connection will never be as good because lead-free is so brittle, making the joint fail relatively quickly.

How much of this is true? I do welcome the thought of not having to breathe in poisonous, lead-filled fumes any more, but if it makes my solder joints suck, I could always opt for wearing a mask :)
 
Lead-filled fumes - not so much

The fumes from soldering are vaporizing flux. Lead, tin, and any other alloyed metals in solder simply don't vaporize at the temperatures we're talking about, so that really shouldn't be your concern.
 
Not realy, they're just newer to the field.

I'm sure with enough time, they will surpass lead-solders in performance (and heat-holdup).
 
Vertigo Acid - I was exaggerating a bit, I know :) My soldering station only goes up to 300C, which is just enough to melt plastics. If it really could vaporize lead, I'd be worried :D

And indeed, I have read quite a few articles on solder manufacturers trying new combinations of metals to get as close a result to Pb-Sn as possible, and seem to be succeeding quite nicely now. As most devices being produced now are RoHS, if lead-free solder sucked so much, we should see a lot more failures especially with portable devices. Where are the massive cellphone, PSP, DS and other failure rates? I guess we know the answer :)

Next up in that case: finding the right type of lead-free solder :p
 
Elledan said:
While reading a topic on Slashdot today (accusations of bad PS3 solder joints leading to failures), a few people were ranting again on how much lead-free solder sucks, how hard it is to use and that the resulting connection will never be as good because lead-free is so brittle, making the joint fail relatively quickly.

How much of this is true? I do welcome the thought of not having to breathe in poisonous, lead-filled fumes any more, but if it makes my solder joints suck, I could always opt for wearing a mask :)
Click to expand...

honestly lead free solders have been on the market for years..... *cough* plumbing applications........

from personal experience i have not noticed any difference between the two solders with the exception that lead free isn't as toxic..... still people will complain about stuff even if there is nothing wrong with it......
 
IIRC, most (if not all) of the lead-free solders have a higher melting point than traditional Pb-Sn. That makes them a bit harder to repair/reflow.
 
Higher melting point is something I have heard before, yeah. Considering the ease with which my soldering station handles Pb-Sn I doubt it'll have issues with lead-free solder :)
 
Even the stuff from Radio Shack is lead free now.... never have had an issue with it at all. I just make sure I use some soldering flux/paste which helps flow the solder as well as clean the connection....

Using solder without using flux/paste is what is sucky. And that is true of solders that are "flux core" as well.

I've been using soldering eqiupment since I was 13 and am now 30 so I do have just a "bit" of experience.
 
cyclone3d said:
Even the stuff from Radio Shack is lead free now.... never have had an issue with it at all. I just make sure I use some soldering flux/paste which helps flow the solder as well as clean the connection....

Using solder without using flux/paste is what is sucky. And that is true of solders that are "flux core" as well.

I've been using soldering eqiupment since I was 13 and am now 30 so I do have just a "bit" of experience.
Click to expand...

it really depends on what you are doing.... electronics for the most part from my experience soldered with less mess using just a flux/rosen core solder, desoldering on the other hand especially if its from OLD electronics may need some of that flux paste..... if your soldering copper plumbing its better to just use the flux paste...... the other thing to keep in mind here is that flux and rosen are acidic... because of this they readily strip off oxide films on metal which would otherwise make soldering difficult.....
 
I've personally designed equipment which uses lead-free BGA parts, thousands of units fielded, and I've never had a failure, warranty or field return which could be explained by a solder ball fracture.

Hell, the majority of things around you (cellphones, iPods, television sets, game consoles, even $20 walmart DVD players) all have lead-free BGA's. While I wouldn't say the industry has lead-free 100% figured out, the reliability is pretty much bang-on to lead parts.

I think the poor reliability of things made nowadays isn't caused by RoHS, but rather cost-reduced mechanical design, lack of testing, lack of quality control, etc. I personally believe we're in the "age of efficiency" right now where the goal is to design things that function for the lowest possible price, with less emphasis on making a solid, quality product.

A friend of mine had an xbox360 standing vertically on a carpeted floor. He knocked it onto its side by accident, and that was enough to give it a red ring of death. Could have been a broken solder ball that did it, but I'd blame mechanical force caused by a crap heatsink design for actually causing that, as opposed to the solder ball material itself. Remember that this is the same console that scratches discs because they didn't want to put rubber bumpers or something stupidly cheap in the disk drive.
 
Completely in agreement, gee :) and yes, the XBox 360 initially used a super-crappy cooling solution which they tweaked in later revisions. It takes effort to get a 30% return rate and it wasn't due to lead-free solder :p
 
gee said:
I've personally designed equipment which uses lead-free BGA parts, thousands of units fielded, and I've never had a failure, warranty or field return which could be explained by a solder ball fracture.

Hell, the majority of things around you (cellphones, iPods, television sets, game consoles, even $20 walmart DVD players) all have lead-free BGA's. While I wouldn't say the industry has lead-free 100% figured out, the reliability is pretty much bang-on to lead parts.

I think the poor reliability of things made nowadays isn't caused by RoHS, but rather cost-reduced mechanical design, lack of testing, lack of quality control, etc. I personally believe we're in the "age of efficiency" right now where the goal is to design things that function for the lowest possible price, with less emphasis on making a solid, quality product.

A friend of mine had an xbox360 standing vertically on a carpeted floor. He knocked it onto its side by accident, and that was enough to give it a red ring of death. Could have been a broken solder ball that did it, but I'd blame mechanical force caused by a crap heatsink design for actually causing that, as opposed to the solder ball material itself. Remember that this is the same console that scratches discs because they didn't want to put rubber bumpers or something stupidly cheap in the disk drive.
Click to expand...

Reminded me of something I read yesterday by pure coincidence:

This violent stopping of the actuator could damage the fragile suspension system of the read/write head. To protect from this damage, the drive designers placed a small donut shaped foam washer at the end of the thin steel bearing rod the actuator slid on. A cost reduction effort within Iomega manufacturing decided that to reduce the cost of the drive they should remove this part. The Zip drives that followed for a several month period are those which exhibited the click of death. Once this omission was discovered by the drives original designers and put back into the design the Zip drive's click of death disappeared.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_of_death

What wonders never cease...
 
Does it suck? It depends who you ask. I personally don't care for it. There are a lot of trade offs and differences. Obviously lead free is better since most people just throw their old electronics in the trash.

Most lead free solder requires a higher temperature to be used than lead based solder. That can result in damage by unskilled manufacturers or repairers. As we all know here at HardForum, heat can kill.

Lead free solder connections are more difficult to inspect. It can be more difficult to spot cold solder joints (connection was disturbed in soldering or repeated rehating and cooling). The lead based solder had a bright shiney look to it when properly soldered. The new lead free stuff looks opaque and looks like a cold solder joint. That's when it's properly done. So it can be tough to spot the difference. Quality control will be more difficult.

People must also be careful to not mix the two up. You will be cleaning that tip a lot if you make that mistake.

I have used both, and I have no love for pb free. If I have a choice, I will not buy items that are lead-free.
 
A few years ago, Dell had tons of problems with their LCD monitors. Because the monitors used lead-free solder, and because it was done poorly, the solder joints on the backlight inverter transformers eventually fail, causing the switching transistors to fry, and the monitor appears dead.

Fortunately for me, that means I have an opportunity to buy the broken monitors at a discount, fix 'em up, and sell them at a profit. :)
 
Not bad. Glad to hear it worked in someones favor. To bad all of those initial owners had to luck out. Todays electronics is just not made to handle any bumps. Those poor connections that "worked" then become total failures. It's really to bad. I have an LCD monitor that I am about to tear open, because I believe it's a similar situation. I am crossing my fingers that my Weller can fix it. :D
 
bigredcat said:
Not bad. Glad to hear it worked in someones favor. To bad all of those initial owners had to luck out. Todays electronics is just not made to handle any bumps. Those poor connections that "worked" then become total failures. It's really to bad. I have an LCD monitor that I am about to tear open, because I believe it's a similar situation. I am crossing my fingers that my Weller can fix it. :D
Click to expand...
May I suggest a trip over to the BadCaps forum? They have an active subforum dealing with monitors, and there's a decent chance you'll find the necessary information over there.
 
Maybe they've got worse at soldering things down properly rather than the solder being at fault. :?
 
I worked in PCB manufacturing for almost 5 years, and I didn't
find lead free that much of a pain to work with. It doesn't flow as well
as the leaded stuff, but it's not as big of a hassle as people make
it out to be.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
BronxBartoni said:
I worked in PCB manufacturing for almost 5 years, and I didn't
find lead free that much of a pain to work with. It doesn't flow as well
as the leaded stuff, but it's not as big of a hassle as people make
it out to be.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
Click to expand...

Having built a few DIY electronics items myself, I also think it's not nearly as big of a hassle as people make it out to be. Nonetheless, I find that regular leaded solder to be easier to work with so I prefer to use it. That being said, I won't go jumping off a bridge once leaded solder is no longer available (though I think it'll take quite some time for me to burn thru my current stockpile...)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top