It’s not my intention to be fighting all over this thread, but if you’re worried about lead exposure because of the crazy crap you work on, like old radios and stuff, wear gloves at all times.
If you don’t wanna use disposable nitrile, use dishwashing gloves.
You probably won’t get 70+ bidenbrained from using the “blow the smoke away” fume extraction method as a hobbyist.
You will absolutely get 40+ bidenbrained from touching all over your leaded solder and leaded joints then touching your face/mouth.
Don’t do what farting_weedman once did and straighten a curled solder strand straight with their mouth like one might when wetting a thread and threading a needle.
Yeahh, holding the (leaded) solder with my mouth while I'm placing components is definitely not something I do each time I'm on the iron.
Even holding old parts in your mouth by the leads is bad because sometimes they’re tinned instead of aluminum coated copper or whatever.
There’s genuinely a like “thought pattern feeling” that I’m scared is oral heavy metals exposure. Waiting on the blood panel to come back…
You can also just wash your hands after working with lead solder.
Yeah if you can’t get to gloves then that’s the best option.
One of the pcb places I worked at had a training where they went over the statistics on gloves versus hand washing and it seemed dire.
At the same time I’d believe 100% that came from a nitrile glove distributor cutout.
gonna keep using the leaded because I turn on my fume hood if i need to melt it and it works like a million times better
Ew, imagine having brittle, unreliable solder joints instead of just using the fume extractor that you should already be using. You think that flux smoke is good for you?
every piece of professionally-made electronics you have ever purchased within like the past 20 years uses non-leaded solder, I repeat this is a skill issue
I repair lots of equipment and pa speakers made after the rohs unironically always have bad joints because so may of the components aren’t designed for high vibration environments (it’s a subwoofer, it’s like literally its own source of high vibration environment! I’m going to go insane and get arrested for doing okc to ev and behringers design departments!)
It's also by design. Repeated heating and cooling cycles in consumer grade electronics eventually lead to micro fractures in the solder, which will make it so you have to replace it the future. Zero fail spec electronics (think space craft, aircraft, high heat applications, or other applications that would cause mass casualties if they fail) use leaded solder because it does not fracture. In it's intact form inside of your phone or computer, leaded solder really is harmless.
Maybe they'd still be able to solder if they hadn't huffed so much lead.
Love to solder my components at at least 1749° in order to boil the lead and inhale the fumes.
Nah. Multilayer boards and smd stuff with tiny little plastic parts need leaded to safely desolder and clean up.
If you’re talking about through hole and some larger pitch smd soldering then yeah, you can get away with lead free especially in paste form.
skill issue
Maybe. I’ve never seen anyone do rework or replacement of fine pitch connectors with shrouded leads on big multilayer boards like video cards and stuff without low melt.
A factory I worked at would sometimes place replacement components on masked pads and run the assembly through the heater again, but that’s uh, not recommended for a lot of parts now…
It's like saying using a power drill instead of a screw driver. Leaded solder is so much easier to work with so bit using it doesn't make sense. You keep bringing up RoHS electronics but those are soldered at high heat in a controlled environment by robots. Non leader solder works fine for that and it's mid environmentally friendly for mass produced electronics to not use lead.
See this is the dumb crap I am talking about. Every single sentence you wrote was false. Lead-brains will spin a quilt of exquisite bullshit cope when it really is this simple: skill issue. Enjoy your visits to the neurology unit next decade.
There's non-lead soder?
Yes, they're called RoHS-compliant and the pros have made all electronics for the past 20 years with this stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive
I love how 50% of these comments defending lead solder don't use capital letters or sorrel-check there comment. I been using led solder for years and can't see ant issues.
