Quote:
Originally Posted by stevehertz
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffK
One job I was given as an apprentice at Marconi's was to de-gold gold plated contact pins, though now I wonder if it was de-golding as gold has a melting temperature of over a thousand degrees C. The reason for de-golding was because the gold made any soldering go brittle. Maybe I was just pre-tinning on top of the gold.
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You're saying you were dipping the pins in molten solder? (and breathing in all the fumes as we all did in those days!).
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Quote:
Originally Posted by turretslug
I'm assuming that the de-gold dip was hot solder, rather than hot mercury.... Hopefully, this wasn't a case of getting the apprentice to do the job that everyone else avoided!
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Yes hot solder and it seemed to remove the gold but the temperature would have been to low to melt gold so I am not sure what it actually did. If it did remove gold I should have scraped it off to supplement my apprentice pay! Did plenty of soldering with no extraction equipment when doing wiring and assembly. Not much H&S back then.