Source for lead solder balls?

Should still be able to get them, just they won't be RoHS complient.

 

I bought some Leaded Solder Ball on eBay. I know about the RoHS and that shit, but I didn't know Leaded Solder Balls were banned in the US.

 

I bought these before and had no problem with them
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/0-25mm-BGA-IC-solder-ball-balls-reballing-10k-pcs-Lead-/150450563979?cmd=ViewItem&pt=BI_Electrical_Equipment_Tools&hash=item23078d6b8b

 

Is leaded solder better than the unleaded type we get in the UK?

What are the health risks, if any? Curious.

 

Leaded solder is ALOT stronger than unleaded, holds alot better. No real health risks if you're not using it everyday, and when you do use it, use a facemask. I think it was banned due to factory using it everyday and people getting lead poisoning.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive has a good description of the ROHS directive. It was directed at the growing amount of electronic waste.

 

Lead solder works BETTER, no matter what anyone tells you.

I can say this from the fact that I work for a Multi Port Serial card adapter / Terminal Server / Hardened switches / etc company and we just had to RoHS our entire catalog over the last few years. The # of RMA (return material authorization)'s we have had since RoHS'izing the entire catalog has been A LOT more than with lead solder. Also - the proof in the pudding - government can still have us make special orders with lead solder. Now, why would they have us do this for them, at an increased price, if it wasn't actually better?

Anyway, I mention only because of my experience in this area.

Regards,

npt

RoHS = :evil: (and yes I mean evil, not *BSD)

 

I can understand for factories and other business but why shouldn't the average consumer be able to purchase it. It's no where near as dangerous as a tanning booth FFS.

 

RoHS is especially important for consumer products because consumers are wasteful bastards who will buy crap they don't need and toss last year's model. All that waste will be collected by the ton and sent to a 3rd world country where kids will melt everything down in their family's cooking utensils for precious metals to be recycled and sold back to consumers. The less people/ground water getting poisoned the better.

 

While I agree with Calpis, we now have a new problem (I hardly doubt the industry minds it much, though) which is the XBOX360 effect.

ROHS solders make the equipment more fragile as it becomes brittle after a while resulting on system breakdown.

This is happening more often with non leaded solder than it would on leaded, resulting on increase of faults on computer systems in general.

In the end we have an increase on the amount of trash due to breakdowns so we end with the same situation again. There's no lead in it, but now we have twice the trash ...

The real solution would be proper recycle of the materials instead of dumping them on 3rd world countries. :shrug:

 

they took away lead replacement petrol aka 4 star petrol
used mostly older cars

 

Yes due to it massively polluting the environment. Not sure what that has to do with this discussion though.

I wouldn't mind lead free solder, IF it was easy to visually inspect or shit possible to visually inspect at all. One of my earliest solder problems involved the solder melting around a wire but not onto the wire (didn't use any flux) which resulted in an intermittent connection. Quick flux application and reheating and it was solved. At the time I didn't know what a cold solder joint looks like. Now you won't ever know.

 

There are lead free solders that will solder as well or better then leaded solders but they tend to be at least 8 to 20 times the price of tin/lead solder which is cheap, but silver and other exotic metals aren't cheap... The other issue is with the melting point and the point between going from a liquid to a spongy state which varies a lot...

Still you can buy leaded solder quite easily still.