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This is a casual question - not critical.
Over the last month or so I've been slowly working on my HH detector. While soldering my HH board, I am using a thermostatic controlled soldering iron, which I've been setting to about 230-245C. After doing the main building, I had solder connections which did not bond to the components, but did bond to the copper pads. After finding problems via an ohmmeter, I fixed several bad connections similar to that. They were not "cold", but only flowed onto the copper pads, and surrounded the component leads - and looked good until seen under a magnifying glass.
Question: Since I come from the old days of Pb/Sn solders, before the RoHS component issues, do they require a bit higher temperature to properly flow over the "tinned" leads, which may only be tin instead of lead & tin? I know the alloy of lead & tin has a lower melting point than either lead or tin alone - which made me wonder if that was the cause of my poor soldering success... Or am I just getting bad at soldering?
BTW, back in the 1980s, I did have both NASA & Mil-Spec soldering certificates. This is nothing new to me, before RoHS. I don't ever remember having so many bad connections before! Except when I was a child, soldering aluminum wire, with my dad's plumbing solder.
Kevco
Over the last month or so I've been slowly working on my HH detector. While soldering my HH board, I am using a thermostatic controlled soldering iron, which I've been setting to about 230-245C. After doing the main building, I had solder connections which did not bond to the components, but did bond to the copper pads. After finding problems via an ohmmeter, I fixed several bad connections similar to that. They were not "cold", but only flowed onto the copper pads, and surrounded the component leads - and looked good until seen under a magnifying glass.
Question: Since I come from the old days of Pb/Sn solders, before the RoHS component issues, do they require a bit higher temperature to properly flow over the "tinned" leads, which may only be tin instead of lead & tin? I know the alloy of lead & tin has a lower melting point than either lead or tin alone - which made me wonder if that was the cause of my poor soldering success... Or am I just getting bad at soldering?
BTW, back in the 1980s, I did have both NASA & Mil-Spec soldering certificates. This is nothing new to me, before RoHS. I don't ever remember having so many bad connections before! Except when I was a child, soldering aluminum wire, with my dad's plumbing solder.
Kevco
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