Silver Solder

Yes, I know that and I almost "understand", but my advice for dissipating fumes in the amateur field is to keep the room ventilated (an open window can be enough) and to hold your breath for that short period of time that is enough (this is a conditioned reflex to hold your breath so as not to inhale unhealthy air), but as far as I know blowing on a freshly melted solder causes an acceleration of its cooling making the solder more fragile and nullifying the right attention that everyone has for the quality of the soldering alloy and for the technique used for the soldering itself.

I recently read about extractors for close use with fume filters, but as a personal choice I refuse to take them into consideration.
 
Received the Aim (0.020" 2%) and ChipQuik (0.025" 3%) last week. Both are great solders in 62%/36%/2%: they melt fast, adhere immediately and very nicely as well. Both are a real joy to work with.

10/10, Would sniff lead fumes again.

Both these 1 pound rolls together are cheaper than 1lb of Kester, which is why I went for these. For hobby I don't think I need to look further than this,, maybe for professional use the Kester has benefits.


I really had **** poor chinese solder before compared to this.
 
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Back in '94 I was involved in soldering for a large machine....ahem.. I purchased 300 lbs of 96/4 ingots for solder pots, 2 or 3 hundred lbs of kester 96/4 wire in .031. .062, and .125 diameters using R type flux, and several hundred lbs of .125 solid. (the end use environment could not accept activated flux as the zinc chloride used for that would cause pinhole defects in the .007 inch thick vacuum bellows over time. So, cleanliness was paramoiunt., For a while, I was told that I was purchasing more tin/silver than anybody on the planet... But CERN took over that mantle as they started their build.

Aging of wire core solder is tricky. Some fluxes lose effectivity over time, some chemistry thing. I still have 30 year old rolls of the kester and the flux works perfectly.
Flux always has a range of activation temperature. If the flux is designed to work with 60/40, then it may burn before the work has reached tin/silver temperatures. When you purchase a flux that says "lead free", they are not saying the flux has no lead, they are saying that the activation temperature works for the 221C eutectic temperature of tin/silver without promising it will work at the 183 temp of tin/lead.

I also do stained glass work at home, and that process uses a liquid flux which is always type RA and contains lots of zinc chloride. The issue with zinc chloride is that when it breaks down during the soldering heat, it produces hydrogen chloride (which is the chemical that breaks down the surface oxides of the metal and allows the metallurgical bond to form. Unfortunately, it is acrid as all getout). Stained glass online stores sell 5 inch fans with carbon filters to draw the fumes away from you and the work, and I find that they work really well at fume control.

Eutectic and off eutectic mixes are an interesting thing. Eutectic remains liquid till the last minute, then freeze completely. Unfortunately, at phase change the solder reduces in volume about 15%. This causes lots of tensile stress at the edges of the joint, which can result in temp cycle failure for large through hole pins like relay leads or large solid conductors. 50/50 for example, begins to freeze out incrementally as the temperature drops, so most of the shrinkage occurs while there is still liquid solder in the mix. (google "tie line" for a good explanation of this effect, as well as the resultant grain alloy composition during the freeze.) The end result is there is far less tensile stress in a 50/50 solder joint. There is a good reason plumbing solder was 50/50.

For stained glass work, this causes a reduction in the tensile forces attempting to peel the glued foil away from the glass.

Bell labs developed a bismuth loaded solder for top of pole reliability, as it did not shrink during solidification.

For tin whiskers, I've no experience with that using tin/silver. However, I have about a thousand COTS supplies in use where the components used had tin plated finishes, and I've some neat pictures of whisker formation on the parts I performed autopsies on.

John

PS. Someone mentioned lead "fumes". We had safety analyze the composition of the fumes resulting from soldering using tin/lead, and they said that there was NO lead present in the fumes. Basically, it was the flux fumes that are the concern.
 
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googled tie line, it was odd.

I present a link that actually explains fairly well.. However, they are horribly incorrect in the phase diagram, as there is an alpha phase on the left and a beta phase on the right. What are they thinking?? Freezeout is not 100% lead.!!! sheesh.

Reliance on google searches is so questionable. I also find AI searches to be the same when it comes to this hi-tech stuff. The AI learns from what is posted, not from what is correct..

To quote a real resourse....what a world, what a world...

John

https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshe...ou have the composition of the liquid mixture.

PS. the resource was the wicked witch of the west..