Re: Soldering to gold plated terminals
Hot solder dissolves gold.
HP used to use a standard copper-nickel-gold plated finish on PCBs. The gold acted as etch resist.
The solder in the flow solder machines used to go off after time... it went grainy. We didn't know it but it was gold build-up from all the boards that had been through it. We dropped the bad solder out and put it in a scrap stillage and paid for it to be taken away.
Someone nicked the scrap stillage. What a prat! we all thought... but why nick that and not the brand new solder bars nearby? Huh? and then we found out that the bad solder was worth a heck of a lot more than the new stuff. We got burgled, but we made money out of it. We sold the scrap solder from then on instead of paying for its removal.
Gold takes solder very well indeed. Getting solder off gold if you made a mistake and let it flow onto contact fingers is the problem.
David
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Can't afford the volcanic island yet, but the plans for my monorail and the goons' uniforms are done
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