Solder
is an alloy of various materials. The
most common ones for leading and copper foil work are tin, lead, copper and
silver. The most important is tin. There are, of course, some solders that do
not have tin in their composition.
The
most common alloy for us is tin and lead.
Various proportions produce different melting (liquidus) and
solidification (solidus) points. This
graph shows the effect of changing the amount of tin in a tin/lead solder.
This
shows that 61.9% tin and 38.1% lead produces an eutectic solder (although
others report a 63/37 alloy as eutectic).
That is, a solder which has both its liquidus and solidus temperatures
the same. This kind of solder solidifies
very quickly after its melting. If we
put a lot more heat into this kind of solder, it takes time to become
solid. During that cooling, the solder
bead can become disturbed and become either crystalline or marked. The objective should be to move quickly
enough to melt the solder, but not to dwell, as that adds heat.
For
the other common combinations [insert ref to previous blog entry] there is a
temperature range where the solder is pasty.
It is neither fully liquid (needed to get a good bead) nor yet solid. It is in this range that various problems can
arise.
Failing
to get the solder to the liquidus state will result in what is called a cold
joint. The solder is crystalline at the
visible level. It has visible cracks and
will not adhere to the copper foil or lead properly. If disturbed while the temperature is in the
pasty range while cooling from the liquidus state, you will also get a
crystalline structure to the solder, resulting in an insecure joint.
The
graph also shows the melting points of lead (327.5C) and tin (232C). The wonder of an alloy is that by combining
these two metals, the solidus points are greatly changed. This graph shows is
that tin is not fully solid until 13C, while lead is solid immediately below its
liquidus point, but by combining them a solidus temperature of 183C is
achieved.
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