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"You really think it's worth getting bent out of shape that one guy is using a little bit of lead solder to repair a valuable antique" Yes. Not even close. A

"You really think it's worth getting bent out of shape that one guy is using a little bit of lead solder to repair a valuable antique" Yes. Not even close. As someone who repaires such things myself, I know that there is no excuse for it. Simple as that. I do it myself and so I know just how not-a-problem it is. Several lead-free solders are perfectly usable in all the same places, and the only way to reduce the background radiation of lead permeating the entire environment, is to stop putting it into the environment. Keeping the antique radio out of the dump does not excuse the fact that the same user had to buy a spool of lead solder which had to be manufactured, and at least half of that spool will go right into the environment, not into museum exhibits. It will be in spatters and sponges and wicks and soldapults and brillo scrubbers and random junk scrapped wiring and junk projects that are not antique radios housed in museums forever. Probably 90% or more of that spool ends up all over the environment rather than in some precious artifact. Yes the lead-free solders are slightly more difficult to work with, but hardly enough to matter. If you never soldered anything before, the very act of soldering successfully at all is a baffling art to a lot of people. After some amount of trial & error, maybe training if they're lucky enough to know someone, they eventually develop a feel and a sense for how to get it to work right. Going from lead to lead-free requires a similar adjustment, but it's a freaking microscopic fraction of the difficulty. Complaining about lead-free solder is nothing but pathetic baby crying, and crying over something that is simply not that difficult, and something that comes at a simply inexcusable cost.

wakawaka28 3y ago
[flagged]
- mordechai9000 3y ago
  I don't think we should be resorting to calling each other crying babies over this. I recognize that you were not the first. > I think nobody craves lead in their life. Plenty of people scoff at the idea that handling lead is risky, whether it's fishing weights, ammunition, or lead solder. I've watched a trained engineer use his teeth to crimp lead fishing weights. He said there wasn't enough exposure to matter, and people had been doing this since before he was born. Is he right? I dunno. I personally want every brain cell I can muster.
  - wakawaka28 3y ago
    Yes, I just said it was petty to single out hobbyists who use a few grams of lead for a good purpose as if they are killing the planet. That is a hysterical take, and he got more hysterical when I called him out on exaggerating, not knowing what he was talking about, and most likely being a hypocrite. The lithium battery in each of our phones is probably more polluting than an average hobbyist's lifetime allotment of solder. >Plenty of people scoff at the idea that handling lead is risky, whether it's fishing weights, ammunition, or lead solder. I've watched a trained engineer use his teeth to crimp lead fishing weights. He said there wasn't enough exposure to matter, and people had been doing this since before he was born. Is he right? I dunno. I personally want every brain cell I can muster. Everything has costs and benefits. In many applications, there are no suitable alternatives to lead, or else the alternatives are scarce and expensive. As a society we have eliminated most excess lead so I think further browbeating over it is silly. Virtually every car has a lead battery, most brass has some lead in it, but otherwise it is scarce in most households. Ammunition is one case where lead is potentially dangerous, but if you need ammunition then the mild precautions necessary to handle the lead are well worth it.
bxparks 3y ago
You have strong opinions on the use of leaded solder. I'm curious if you have some numbers to drive home your point. For example, what is the relative risk of using leaded solder for a hobbyist creating a handful of prototype circuit boards a year (using proper ventilation of course), versus living close to an airport exposed to burning jet fuel which contains lead to this day? I want to know, roughly speaking, if using leaded solder a few times a year cause 100X more exposure or only 1/100 the exposure compared to living near an airport. If it's only 1/100 compare to an airport, I'm not going to worry about it. If it's 100X, then I think your position is quite valid. [Addendum: Another example, what is the risk of leaded solder compared to lead exposure from common household items like brass knobs, handles, fixtures, and keys?] My current inventory of solder was obtained from estate sales, so they are all leaded, but old stock, not newly manufactured. If I had not bought them, they would have been thrown away into the garbage dumps.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  A simple observation that cannot be refuted because it's an already accomplished fact that I have no problem soldering with 305 (or anything else really) is not a strong opinion. All anyone can say is that maybe I'm lying or maybe don't know what a good job looks like and so don't know I'm actually having problems. Or maybe I only ever tried within a narrow sliver of ideal situations and conditions. We will all just have to grant each other some basics like that or else there's no point in conversing at all. But it's farcical me to say "I use it all the time and it's fine." and respond "You're wrong." Really? I didn't just do the thing I just watched my hands do right in front of my face? This project in my hands is not actually soldered? And doesn't actually work? Am I in an Elon Musk simulation or something? My physics are not different from your physics. My sac305 is not different from your sac305. My 300-350 degrees c is not different from your 300-350 degrees c. Such basic implacables are not a "strong opinion" But, it's true that, having examined the basic facts and tried things myself, I have now arrived at a conclusion that is a rather strong opinion that the crybabying is nothing more than that. 63/37 is a little easier and that's all there is to that.
  - bxparks 3y ago
jki275 3y ago
Sorry, but as someone who has had to use them, lead-free solders are garbage. They are difficult to work with, require higher temperatures to use, don't last as long, whisker and destroy equipment they're used in. This is all well known, it's not a mystery, and lead in solder is the least of the problems with lead in the world today.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  How come I have no problem? Even with plain old sac305 let alone the supposedly nicer ones. From big old chunky point to point, to manually drag soldering 0.5mm pitch tssop. I have no problem doing something that you claim is impossible or too difficult, and somehow this makes me the crybaby? Ok. Frankly if it was me I wouldn't be so keen to tell everyone how weak and incapable I was. I grew up on leaded as we all did. I used to really like the radio shack 0.015in 62/36/2 silver bearing. Did indeed work very nice. And yet after an inconsequentially short maybe a single hour of effort, I was able to adjust to 305. You telling me I'm just better than you? Well if I'm just better, then shouldn't you be listening instead of arguing? If I'm not better, then how do you explain my lack of difficulty with something you claim is difficult?
  - jki275 3y ago
    You're putting a whole lot of words in my mouth and setting up a whole field of straw men there. Good luck with that.
- exmadscientist 3y ago
  If all you've used is crappy old SAC305 lead-free solder, you owe it to yourself to try a modern alloy like SN100C (& friends, it has several names and similar competitors). It's generations newer and with the right flux (I like AIM's Glow Core wire) it's just great for routine work. It runs a little hotter, but most people already solder too hot anyway, so who cares. I still use 63/37 or 62/36/2 for anything challenging, though. Or for old rework: many people in this thread are missing that you really, really shouldn't mix alloys on a joint, so you've got to get the old stuff out before switching to lead-free, and at single-joint scale that's a lot more polluting than just grabbing the spool of 63/37.
LM358 3y ago
You are aware that leaded solder is in use in many industries to this day? I'm soldering with SN62 now as we speak.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  You are aware that this means, validates, invalidates, nothing?

wakawaka28 3y ago

[flagged]

mordechai9000 3y ago
I don't think we should be resorting to calling each other crying babies over this. I recognize that you were not the first. > I think nobody craves lead in their life. Plenty of people scoff at the idea that handling lead is risky, whether it's fishing weights, ammunition, or lead solder. I've watched a trained engineer use his teeth to crimp lead fishing weights. He said there wasn't enough exposure to matter, and people had been doing this since before he was born. Is he right? I dunno. I personally want every brain cell I can muster.
- wakawaka28 3y ago
  Yes, I just said it was petty to single out hobbyists who use a few grams of lead for a good purpose as if they are killing the planet. That is a hysterical take, and he got more hysterical when I called him out on exaggerating, not knowing what he was talking about, and most likely being a hypocrite. The lithium battery in each of our phones is probably more polluting than an average hobbyist's lifetime allotment of solder. >Plenty of people scoff at the idea that handling lead is risky, whether it's fishing weights, ammunition, or lead solder. I've watched a trained engineer use his teeth to crimp lead fishing weights. He said there wasn't enough exposure to matter, and people had been doing this since before he was born. Is he right? I dunno. I personally want every brain cell I can muster. Everything has costs and benefits. In many applications, there are no suitable alternatives to lead, or else the alternatives are scarce and expensive. As a society we have eliminated most excess lead so I think further browbeating over it is silly. Virtually every car has a lead battery, most brass has some lead in it, but otherwise it is scarce in most households. Ammunition is one case where lead is potentially dangerous, but if you need ammunition then the mild precautions necessary to handle the lead are well worth it.

bxparks 3y ago

You have strong opinions on the use of leaded solder. I'm curious if you have some numbers to drive home your point. For example, what is the relative risk of using leaded solder for a hobbyist creating a handful of prototype circuit boards a year (using proper ventilation of course), versus living close to an airport exposed to burning jet fuel which contains lead to this day? I want to know, roughly speaking, if using leaded solder a few times a year cause 100X more exposure or only 1/100 the exposure compared to living near an airport. If it's only 1/100 compare to an airport, I'm not going to worry about it. If it's 100X, then I think your position is quite valid. [Addendum: Another example, what is the risk of leaded solder compared to lead exposure from common household items like brass knobs, handles, fixtures, and keys?] My current inventory of solder was obtained from estate sales, so they are all leaded, but old stock, not newly manufactured. If I had not bought them, they would have been thrown away into the garbage dumps.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
A simple observation that cannot be refuted because it's an already accomplished fact that I have no problem soldering with 305 (or anything else really) is not a strong opinion. All anyone can say is that maybe I'm lying or maybe don't know what a good job looks like and so don't know I'm actually having problems. Or maybe I only ever tried within a narrow sliver of ideal situations and conditions. We will all just have to grant each other some basics like that or else there's no point in conversing at all. But it's farcical me to say "I use it all the time and it's fine." and respond "You're wrong." Really? I didn't just do the thing I just watched my hands do right in front of my face? This project in my hands is not actually soldered? And doesn't actually work? Am I in an Elon Musk simulation or something? My physics are not different from your physics. My sac305 is not different from your sac305. My 300-350 degrees c is not different from your 300-350 degrees c. Such basic implacables are not a "strong opinion" But, it's true that, having examined the basic facts and tried things myself, I have now arrived at a conclusion that is a rather strong opinion that the crybabying is nothing more than that. 63/37 is a little easier and that's all there is to that.
- bxparks 3y ago

jki275 3y ago

Sorry, but as someone who has had to use them, lead-free solders are garbage. They are difficult to work with, require higher temperatures to use, don't last as long, whisker and destroy equipment they're used in. This is all well known, it's not a mystery, and lead in solder is the least of the problems with lead in the world today.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
How come I have no problem? Even with plain old sac305 let alone the supposedly nicer ones. From big old chunky point to point, to manually drag soldering 0.5mm pitch tssop. I have no problem doing something that you claim is impossible or too difficult, and somehow this makes me the crybaby? Ok. Frankly if it was me I wouldn't be so keen to tell everyone how weak and incapable I was. I grew up on leaded as we all did. I used to really like the radio shack 0.015in 62/36/2 silver bearing. Did indeed work very nice. And yet after an inconsequentially short maybe a single hour of effort, I was able to adjust to 305. You telling me I'm just better than you? Well if I'm just better, then shouldn't you be listening instead of arguing? If I'm not better, then how do you explain my lack of difficulty with something you claim is difficult?
- jki275 3y ago
  You're putting a whole lot of words in my mouth and setting up a whole field of straw men there. Good luck with that.
exmadscientist 3y ago
If all you've used is crappy old SAC305 lead-free solder, you owe it to yourself to try a modern alloy like SN100C (& friends, it has several names and similar competitors). It's generations newer and with the right flux (I like AIM's Glow Core wire) it's just great for routine work. It runs a little hotter, but most people already solder too hot anyway, so who cares. I still use 63/37 or 62/36/2 for anything challenging, though. Or for old rework: many people in this thread are missing that you really, really shouldn't mix alloys on a joint, so you've got to get the old stuff out before switching to lead-free, and at single-joint scale that's a lot more polluting than just grabbing the spool of 63/37.

LM358 3y ago

You are aware that leaded solder is in use in many industries to this day? I'm soldering with SN62 now as we speak.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
You are aware that this means, validates, invalidates, nothing?