Solder: leaded or unleaded

I’m not going to lie I’m sat here laughing my ass of at it… lead will and does cause lung damage over YEARS of use you can see it in assemble personal and roofers alike. But obviously nothings going to change a certain person’s mind :roll_eyes:

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Oh yawn, a big sister… who needs that shit?
First posts here but I been on the hellholes of forums.
As for lead it extremely hard to absorb unless you ingest it in quantity. Fine vapors of the dioxide being some of the worst or from leaded fuels.
If lead purifies you I got silver amalgamate filling too, oh my.

Cell phones, medical, R&D equipment are exempt. Medical equipment for reliability and cell phones because Philco lobbied for it; they knew the failure rates be sky high. Cells Phones are the biggest leaded throwaways on the planet… to put your greenness in perspective.
Autos are exempt as well as military equipment.

Many pathogenic bacteria and fungus spores can happily sit dormant on unsterilized assembles waiting for a nice wet, warm, iron rich home to become available.
Lead should be the least of your concerns.

Simple Starter Solder Station Setup (& Arduino)

Sounds to me like we are all talking in circles, :recycle: trying to convince others of our understanding and beliefs.

I think all the points of view have been put across, Nobody is going to change anybody else stance.

How about we leave it there, if people have a further questions they can do their own research make their own decisions. :interrobang:

Agree to disagree

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I use a kind of spot weld to connect the flex antennas to chips, same as the robots that make full size ISO cards use… zero solder. In the glass tubes, there’s a number of methods including flip chip to COB… but sometimes a very small amount of tin solder is used, then fully encapsulated in med grade resin, inside the glass.

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This is… hard to believe. How do you know you have no elevated lead levels? How exactly did you test this? Also, it doesn’t take acute toxicity to drastically effect your brain, which is the primary issue with lead… chronic exposure, even at a low level, has a subtle but detectable effect on cognitive abilities, even in adults. In fact, a man who I can’t remember and Google has failed to find for me spent 30+ years fighting to ban leaded gasoline because he was tracking an overall lowering of IQs across the US as more and more cars were driven throughout the cities and other congested areas. Much more acute effects were seen when leaded gas was first being handled in the 1920s… https://www.wired.com/2013/01/looney-gas-and-lead-poisoning-a-short-sad-history/

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So was this before the spot welding or is that the:

Am I the only one who automatically goes look at the history when I see a withdrawn post? :slight_smile:

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I just felt it was further derailing the conversation so I decided to remove it :wink:

Ah right I see. I have a (much larger, surely) spot welding station like that, to weld tabs to Li-ion battery cells, to make battery packs - because battery cells don’t take too kindly to being heated by a soldering iron. I didn’t think chips would survive the process though.

Ah, yes the unsung hero Clair Patterson. He was also the man who accurately estimated the age of the Earth using lead-lead dating methods. He found it impossible to remove all lead from his lab space, and thereby discovered the extent of lead contamination due to tetraethyllead that was added to gasoline. Then he started a crusade to stop it, and now here we are, slightly less dumb as a result. (Now if only we could start a crusade to remove all this dumb contamination)

Oh wait, I think you may have meant Dr. Herb Needleman

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Like trying to prevent Entropy. A noble undertaking, but ultimately doomed.

Still, I organize stuff and try to educate. :crazy_face:

Interesting.

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Put them all under a spoiler tag with a warning and a source.

Real talk, https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002822.htm

The Bismuth and Antimony in low-melt solders can harm you, but not in as small quantities as lead can. The most common eutectic composition for unleaded solder is 96.5% Tin 3.0% Silver and 0.5% Copper, none of which are harmful even if you ate the whole spool.

As long as it’s sealed and stays that way there are only two potential issues I see; the sealant and the outside being sterile.
The sealant must be 100% compatible and nonreactive.
The electronics should be fully encapsulated in the sealant with no gaps between glass and sealant.
If the sealant bond fails to the glass and creates a gap, bacteria and fungus can grow/colonize as they would be sheltered from the immune system there. Not good.

The other issue is all the outside surfaces not being or staying sterile doing insertion. Basically you’re creating a deep sealed punctor wound. Most times you probably will get away with it however if it infected it could get really nasty. Sepsis and cellulitis can move rapidly and become limb/life threatening in hours.

Other infections can be slower growing but especially fungal ones may require the removal of all infected tissues to cure.
These little monsters are no joke… and spores are some the hardest to sterilize.*
Consider the implications when you place an implant near tendons, nerves and critical structures if invasive debridement becomes necessary…

*Isopropyl alcohol will not sterilize the skin; any contact between implant and external skin needs to be avoided.
Sterilization of the implant it’s self is dicing too… short of using an autoclave.

Minimize (>5 minutes, less is best) the time to wound is open and make sure the skin sides are match evenly including the deep tissue layers. They will bond in less then an hour if done right and be mostly heal within 3 to 7 days. If you use crazy glue, sides must be aligned tight together and not seeping fluid.
Allow none of the glue below the skin surface as it will be rejected and cause delayed healing.
Otherwise butterfly stitch it. Sutures increase tissue damage, infection risk and delay healing.

I’ve done a lot of self surgery, lacerations closings and got away with it. Using peroxide or isopropyl.
That doesn’t mean you will or even myself the next time; plenty of room and ways into the hurt locker.
Best to minimize how many times you put yourself in harms way.
My scars are my tats…

Not sure you can ever truly sterilize skin. You can get it as aseptic as possible, but to be sterile would kill your skin also.

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They are the glass is sealed around them (no additional sealant. Think of it like a valve or nixie tube (one end closed electronics put in other end heated and sealed)

Skin is never and can never be truly sterile.

Which is why with the x series implants they are sterilised pre loaded in the implanters (open and use)

X series implant take about 10s flex take a little longer but almost always <2m.

Don’t, if you want to use glue get skin glue.

Side not this is really off topic … this topic is supposed to be about soldering station for beginners.

Well if they insist on using high temp ie no lead solder they’re going have a real rough ride.
Most have trouble learning to solder with lead based.
The lead is an excellent wetting agent; without it the solder doesn’t want to flow or stick.
The flux is less effective as well. That also means where I can burn through some surface oxidation with leaded and a good flux, you can’t with no lead.
Surfaces need to be a lot more pristine. After decades of doing this I know have real good idea how well a novice will do.
Cold solder joints are the bane of assembly. Extremely hard to spot if you do see it when you’re screwing it up.
Novice assemblers rarely do…

The longer it takes to complete the joint, the more chance thermal damage plus at the higher working temp of no lead solders you’re already way above the semiconductor’s critical temp… and those pads aren’t leads ie almost no thermal insulation between where your soldering and the semiconductor’s junction(s).
So if you aren’t fast, it’s going be toast as you -try- to get the no lead solder to wet and adhere but it just wants to paste up, add more solder and heat… yes, well.

Lol, try solder iron flowing a fine pitch flat pack on… it won’t work well if at all. You’ll make a big mess and my leaded solder one will look perfect almost like it was reflowed… and no cold joints.
Bah-ha-ha-ha!
LMAO… you been warned.
TFF… you -really- should be concerned when you see me having this much fun😈

The cold solder joint issue was describing a problem with an x-series… so if uses tin solder to connect the inductor leads to the carrier board.

Yes like that, but you’re station runs current through the metal being welded (as do all normal electric welding systems) but mine doesn’t. It uses a pulse to flash heat a special welding tip which basically melts the metals together, bonding them without solder.

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You can easily solder LI cells and coin bats, done it.
Flat packs and SM are dicier to hand solder…
You heed a wide enough chisel tip to transfer the heat quickly, pretinned wire/clean surfaces and be fast about it. Don’t cook it.
I use 765-85F temp setting.
Use rosin core lead based 63/37 solder… better wetting, lower temp.