I never tried tin plating PCBs, from memory the stuff was expensive, hard to
get and went "off" quickly. Seemed like a lot of hassle for little reward,
I just sprayed boards with clear lacquer.
Out of curiosity I looked up chemical tin plating, and of course ENIG comes
up. The 'N' is nickel, and the 'G' is gold. Explains why it's expensive I
guess.
The other type of chemical nickel plating is a nickel phosphor coating, not
good for PCBs but ok for machinery parts.
It's occurred to me that if you were into milling PCBs you could
electroplate the copper board beforehand. I wonder if anyone does that.
Tony
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-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf
Of Dave
Sent: Friday, 30 October 2020 1:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [homebrewpcbs] RoHS question
Tony,
? I tinned some of my first home made pcb's but never again. And the
boards
I ordered are of the ENIG variety. No rocket science comes out of my
hobby.
:)
On 10/28/2020 3:08 PM, Tony Smith wrote:
Yes, we're in violent agreement.
Unless you're a manufacturer, RoHS (or whatever your local flavour is)
isn't a problem.
Space vehicles are exempt from these regulations, I guess they figure
not many of them are going to wind up in a landfill. For the tin
whiskers, the problem wasn't lead-free solder, it's the tin plating on
the copper tracks, something even hobbyists do. I think they nickel
plate stuff like spacecraft PCBs now.
Dunno if there is a chemical solution to do nickel plating on copper
like you do with tin, but electroplating nickel is really easy.
Tony
