On Monday, May 2, 2016 at 2:09:22 PM UTC-4, Ian Field wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Saturday, April 30, 2016 at 2:00:53 PM UTC-4, Jon Elson wrote:
Ralph Mowery wrote:


As it is just for my own use at home I am not worried about the legal
Rohs part.
OK, just for your own use, you can do repairs with PbSn solder on
assemblies
made originally with Pb free. I do this all the time, never had a
problem.

Me too, the amalgamate talk makes me wonder though.

Reworking lead free with 60/40 sometimes gives a grainy finish that looks
even more dodgy than the original lead free.

When I was in TV repair, most Asian manufacturers had converted before most
people in the UK had even heard of RoHS. (but it took the Asian
manufacturers a lot longer to get it right).

My introduction to lead free solder was a steady stream of TVs with bizzare
random faults that defied any attempt at logical diagnosis - going over the
soldering fixed them as if by magic.

With Hitachi sets; you could push down on a component and the whole solder
fillet would detach from the other side, that revealed a thin black layer of
oxide on the copper.

On Sony sets; the solder looked as good as lead free ever can - but going
over the soldering fixed over 90% of all faults.

During that time I routinely used 60/40 - I didn't get many bounced repairs,
and not many of those had anything to do with solder.

Thanks Ian, I'm a bit confused by your response though.
It's starts by saying 60/40 on lead free is dodgy,
and ends by saying you had few problems when using it.

George H.