Solder for the GSSL turbo, Super Sidechain etc. ROHS?

I am about to begin populating the Turbo boards, and a couple of sidechain PCB's, and I can see that the board pads for all these boards are nicely tinned. It got me to wondering, in these days of ROHS, if the tinning on these PCB's is lead free or not, as this would have a bearing on the type of solder that it would be necessary to use to solder the components on without mixing solder types?

My understanding is our PCB supplier is using RoHs compliant products for quite some time.

Best I go and get some lead free solder then. :sam:

I don't believe that you have to use lead-free... as far as I understand it, leaded solder will work just perfectly on these or any unleaded-tinned PCBs.

Unless someone tell me why it's not a good idea...

Keith

For a while we were doing component-level repair on digital camera PCBs - all RoHS lead-free stuff. Sometimes the Ball Grid Array ICs would lift off the pads below (the lead-free solder is apparently brittle) so we would remove the old solder and replace it with 60/40 (manually!) ball by ball.

After that you had a repaired board that seldom came back for the same fault.

FWIW.

[quote author="SSLtech"]I don't believe that you have to use lead-free... as far as I understand it, leaded solder will work just perfectly on these or any unleaded-tinned PCBs.

Unless someone tell me why it's not a good idea...

Keith[/quote]

That's good news, I don't really want to move to lead free. I had heard that the two don't mix too well though, but I can't find anything much on the web about what happens when you mix the two types.

[quote author="Steve Jones"] but I can't find anything much on the web about what happens when you mix the two types.[/quote]
It might be anti-climactic for you: they mix :grin:

When I referred to removing the old lead-free solder I meant that we just put a big blob of 60/40 on top of the old stuff. The two metals seem to have a strong affinity for each other. I'm sure the metallurgical guys can explain it better.

The boards I sell are all RoHS compliant too. Hopefully people are using lead bearing solder on them for reliability...when and where they can.

if you are just using a standard soldering iron ande are unconcerned with ROHS, try and find 63 37 solder. It was a total revelation for me when I'd been using 60:40 for a while. Lead free is really not the best option unless you you have ROHS concens cos you are a business

I'm, sure that people who know far more than me will chiome in with regard to mixing solder types, but id if you can still get the 63 37 where you are, you will have a mich easier time using it and dry joints willbe considerably less. :thumb:

Please excuse my typing but I'm pissed. You know when this forum has got5 you when you come in at 6am and check what's happening :roll:

and then try nd post soldering advice... hehe

So is the bottom line for now that we can just live on as we did before by using 60/40 (or 63/37),
and simply ignore the RoHS-taste some of the 'new' stuff might have ?

That'd be better than I thought to had understood the issue, but great news at that!

Thanks