On Jul 16, 9:21*am, "N_Cook" wrote:
Arfa Daily wrote in message

...









God, how I hate the rotten stuff. I've now been caught twice in two weeks
with Sony KSS xxx series lasers. For those who don't know, these lasers
(in
common with lots of other makes) are shipped with the laser diode shorted
by
a blob of solder across two closely spaced pads on the little pcb that
carries the connector and power pot. You remove this blob once the device
is
installed, by just touching your iron tip against it. The solder has
always
in the past, just 'flowed' onto the iron tip by surface tension, I guess.
However, all that has changed with lead-free. Because the bloody stuff
'strings', you have to be REALLY careful that a barely visible whisker
hasn't been left across the pads.

If this happens, you're left with a laser that doesn't burn, and hence
won't
read discs. The first one last week, was in a Pioneer, and was reasonably
easy to get at, but this morning's one wasted a whole bunch more time,
because the laser was in the depths of a mechanism in a 300 disc 'jukebox'
type player. You can't test without mostly reassembling the mech.

So now, rather than relying on a removal method that just worked, and on
most units could be carried out with the laser in situ and connected, it
is
necessary to remove the solder blob with the laser right out so that you
can
hold it up to a light to make sure that the gap is completely clear. Which
rather defeats the purpose of having the laser shorted in the first place
...

Arfa

So I suppose the lesson is solder a loose wire link across and remove their
blob , all in good lighting/viewing. Assemble and cut or desolder your wire
fudge bridge after placement.

I was given a small battery powered soldering iron a few years ago as
a gift. It came with a small coil of solder. In the beginning I'd take
it on small jobs with me and I noticed that I could never do a good
soldering job with the thing. Now I've been soldering for over 50
years so I figured it couldn't have been me. The solder wouldn't flow,
it would blob etc. Finally one morning while on the throne having
nothing better to read, I read trough the instructions for the
miserable thing. It seems like the manufacturer had seen fit to
package these things with lead free solder. As soon as I got rid of
the worthless stuff the iron was fine. Thankfully we don't have to
deal with that bull**** here in the US yet but it is getting difficult
to find 60/40 in surplus. I'm certain that one day some misinformed
idiot over here is going to picture a baby chewing on a PC board and
get a whole ****load of money and influence together and lobby
Congress to enact similar laws as the EU has. Then we'll be shaving
the whiskers off our boards too. Lenny