Tin Whiskers
 

Modern Marvels on the History Chanel is talking about all of the engineering disasters due to tin whiskers.

I had no idea they even existed!!!

Re: Tin Whiskers
 

or how many satellites, etc. they have taken out.....
very interesting stuff.

Cool stuff!

http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

Tin Whiskers. Gotta love lead free solder.
It's causing me problems with becoming ROHS compliant. Premature failure.

This lead free crap sucks.

Tin whiskers are killing us these days. Well, part of it is the mitigation efforts to stop it (which don't work that well) like Paralyne-C coatings, etc. One of my current projects is designing an electronics box for a military vehicle. What a pain in the hiney.

I first learned about them a year ago. I had a couple of folks that work for NASA complaining about them in a class that I was taking. Interesting stuff.

I work in the semiconductor packaging industry and we deal with this issue all the time. The science is very inexact and little understood. The last time that I checked, I don't believe that they can even be grown on a predictable basis. On the other hand I've got one customer who has a 5lb slug of Sn that was pulled out of a solder tank that looks like a porcupine on his desk.

Yeah, the Aero-Def and automotive industries would like SnPb solders to go on forever. Meanwhile most countries are clamping down on their use and so most of the consumer and commercial companies are phasing them out fast. That means that in the future only a few boutique manufacturers will be equiped to support SnPb. There are things that can be done to manage the problem, some of which are:

1) Bake the soldered item which stress-relieves the surface.
2) Pot or coat the soldered item.
3) Replace the Sn plating with an anternative like NiPdAu (Nickel - Paladium - Gold)

I'm just working on a cat for an exhaust system, are tin whiskers something I should be thinking about?:D

hmmm, Are ROHS boards more likely to fail that good old Lead?