Brads Electronic Projects Forum

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Lb-Lenox-WS15 ... 35c2836663

Other companies want over $50 or $100 for lead free solder. I found this Lenox brand for $20 and the description is:

Contents: 97% Tin, 3% Copper, Rosin Core
Wire Dia.: 0.031"

The store has 99.9% positive feedback and I can get free shipping in my country.

Am I going to need to add rosin or flux?

I compared the specs to Sparkfun's solder which has silver and antimony (see Material Safety Data Sheet):

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10242

Other brands say "no clean".

I don't know if it's a good price or not, but why lead-free? I didn't think you were in Europe. Our company has written off the European market, since their lead-free requirement is more trouble than the European market is worth. I grew up in another country drinking water from lead pipes though (not just soldered with lead), and it definitely did not do any harm to our brains.

I have some spools of lead solder but even though the hobby sites sell leaded solder in small amounts, they have larger amounts in lead free solder and they seem to be pushing lead free while also turning a blind eye to silver in their products.

I was concerned that I was getting the right solder with the right conductivity since I was buying it from a non-electronic site and sites sell solder for plumbing and other work. I have a habit or questioning things and I believe in being safe. I was also looking for some inexpensive solder since Mouser shows solder being sold for as much as $106.71 from this link:

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Kes ... HlEnCTiIsx
http://www.mouser.com/MobileCatalog.aspx?page=2290

I'm more concerned about my kids and showing my electronic projects to my son's school because kids don't always wash their hands. I'm not totally worried about it but I just believe in being safe. My grandparents had a silver cup made and it had their names carved in it. My grandmother said it wasn't safe to drink out of it unless the silver was tarnished and then liquid in the cup could take the tarnish off. I believe she said someone she knew died from it and they figured out what happened when it was too late.

I found an article that answers some of my own questions:

What kind of solder (rosin cored, etc. lead-free)? What is flux and when is it necessary?

http://store.curiousinventor.com/guides ... of_solder/

I ordered a spool of lead free from the ebay link so I can finish some of my hobby projects and I they should have one left but a google search for Lenox solder showed other places I can get it.

Silver is totally safe, although there are silver compounds that will turn your skin bluish-gray if you get too much, something that is just unsightly, not unhealthy. Silverware was originally silver, and it has been in my family as far back as we have history, and my mom, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers always polished all the tarnish off before setting it before guests, but not for when it was just us family. You may have also heard of colloidal silver for healing. I have drunk jars and jars of colloidal silver over the years, getting rid of a bad cold in 15 minutes and even a severe, rapidly spreading infection in my leg in a day. It has not affected my skin color a bit. Now we have learned to get ahead of and avoid the health problems better in the first place through supplemeting nutrients that are missing in our food largely because of modern farming methods. Health is something I have studied a lot as a layman.

As for the lead, I used to even put the lead solder in my mouth at times that I needed a third hand. I don't anymore since supposedly even trace amounts can reduce one's ability to concentrate, but with all I and my peers have done before we knew, it has apparently had no effect whatsoever. We played with mercury in school in the 1960's too, holding it in our bare hands. I will get a good laugh if a new study finds that we do actually need trace amounts of lead and mercury like copper which we also need but is poisonous in more than trace amounts. Lead is very, vey cheap compared to most metals, and all the lead-free components can be soldered with leaded solder. I have quite a few 1-pound rolls of Alpha Metals 60/40 tin/lead rosin-core solder here that I bought at about $10 each at the local Fry's Electronics. I got them when I thought RoHS was going to limit us here in the States too.

The article on flux appears to be a good one, although I only scanned it. About in the middle, it says, "there is concern that the lead from those electronics will leach into ground water supplies from landfills. [...] Interestingly, according to this publication by IPC, no studies have found any evidence of lead getting into the ground water from landfills." We get the ground water quality report every year with the water bill, and although there's a land fill five miles away that got electronics trash put in it for many decades, the lead level in the gound water is only one-eighth of the action level, and the landfill is not one of the suspected sources. Erosion of natural deposits is a suspected source though.

Garth,

I can remember spending time typing in 5K magazine articles on my Commodore 64 and then time BBSing on my Amiga. When the C-64 got warm it didn't smell but I could almost smell it. What happens to the solder when it gets hot? My Commodore 64 didn't get 500 degrees hot but I imagine it as a reflow oven and the chips were manufactured with hazardous chemicals and even one of them had a greasy compound on top of it to probably protect it from overheating. In that sense, I feel that I was exposed to relatively small vapors.

There is a city near me and I remember volunteering at the homeless shelter. The owner said the city kicks people out of their homes when the children at school are tested for lead. Essentially the city makes families homeless and it is a burden if they are poor. The old homes were painted with lead paint and when the paint peels or cracks, the paint gets into the dust in the air and the paint falls to the floor. I don't know how it gets into kids systems but I guess some of them put it in their mouths and eat it or they handle it and play with it and it gets on their hands and they eat without washing their hands. The only way back into some of these homes is to remove as much as the lead paint as possible and to paint over it or possibly other methods have to be employed.

Chuck