60/40 vs. 63/37 Solder
in [Basics]
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From: Dave Platt on 17 Jul 2010 18:26 In article <i1t5jq$k2f$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer(a)comcast.net> wrote: >> Oh, so you didn't read my post after all. To reiterate, 63/37 is 13.80, >> 60/40 is 13.30. That's uh, let's see, oh yeah, less than 4%. > ><GASP!> > >Yes, I DID read your post, and Yes, I did understand exactly what you said. >To wit... that there was almost no difference in the prices of the 60/40 and >63/37 solders from your supplier. That's why I raised the question about why >there WAS such a large difference between Kester's solders. > >I think it was plain from what I wrote that I was wondering why there was >almost no difference in your supplier's prices for solders from (presumably) >the same manufacturer, while Kester solders had a 20% difference. (See >above.) Must /everything/ be explained in excruciating detail five times >over? I think you may have conflated two different issues here, when comparing 60/40 and 63/37. One is the question of manufacture, one is the question of distribution channel (hobby/retail vs. industrial). I just did a lookup on Newark's website, comparing 23 AWG solders manufactured by Kester. Take a look at the catalog page at http://www.newark.com/jsp/content/printCatalog.jsp?display=single&cat=c127&page=2016 and the section on "44 series RA rosin core solder". They have both 63/37 and 60/40 alloy versions of many of the same sizes. For the thinner-gauge varities, the prices for the two alloys seem to be quite close... e.g. for 25-gauge, the 60/40 is $34.15 and the 63/37 is $34.72 (about 1%). 21-gauge is $24.54 and $25.17 (about 2%), 18-gauge is $22.80 and $24.77 respectively (about 9%). The only really big disparity in favor of 60/40 is in the heavy 16-gauge size ($23.20 and $32.53 respectively). Perhaps this reflects the fact that 16-gauge is used less commonly these days, or perhaps Newark is just low in stock? So... based on this evidence, it looks to me as if Kester does not necessarily have a major price skew between the two alloys, at least not in the gauges typically used for PC board assembly. This suggests that the price disparity you cited, may have much more to do with the pricing policies of the one retailer you mentioned (MCM) than they do with the manufacturer's wholesale price. MCM might be pricing the 63/37 as a "premium" product, or perhaps they sell less of it and so tend to amortize the per-SKU overhead costs over a smaller nmber of units? >This happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over and >over, and not just to me. It's because people don't read carefully, then >think about what they've read. Believe me, I sometimes am about to respond >to a post, then discover I'm mis-understood it. Yup. Happens to me too. As a language, English has enough room for ambiguity and misunderstanding to make life interesting at times. FYI, when one of the earlier posters said he'd checked solder prices "from his supplier", I don't think he stated a brand at all... and yet your reply seems to have assumed that he was *not* referring to Kester. If you did assume that (and I'm only sorta assuming that you assumed it :-) it might have misled you a bit. -- Dave Platt <dplatt(a)radagast.org> AE6EO Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
From: Dave Platt on 17 Jul 2010 18:31 In article <i1s9gn$fbc$1(a)reversiblemaps.ath.cx>, Jasen Betts <jasen(a)xnet.co.nz> wrote: >sounds like bullshit, alpha particles aren't energetic enough to get >even 1/10 of the way through the encapsulation on a RAM chip. There were some problems with first-generation DRAM chips back in the late 1970s, which were attributed to alpha-particle upsets due to radio-isotopes in the encapsulating materials. Cite: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1479948 Not having read the article I don't know how close to the silicon it was necessary for the radioisotope in question to be, in order for the resulting alpha particle to disrupt the chip's operation. -- Dave Platt <dplatt(a)radagast.org> AE6EO Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
From: William Sommerwerck on 17 Jul 2010 19:09 > I think you may have conflated two different issues here, when > comparing 60/40 and 63/37. One is the question of manufacture, one is > the question of distribution channel (hobby/retail vs. industrial). I didn't conflate the issues, as the latter hadn't been raised when I first brought up the point. > So... based on this evidence, it looks to me as if Kester does not > necessarily have a major price skew between the two alloys, at least > not in the gauges typically used for PC board assembly. It does in the case of the MCM catalog, at least for the gauge I looked at. Other companies show similar huge disparities. It makes little sense, when the ones you (and Smitty) cited are so close. > FYI, when one of the earlier posters said he'd checked solder prices > "from his supplier", I don't think he stated a brand at all... and yet > your reply seems to have assumed that he was *not* referring to > Kester. If you did assume that (and I'm only sorta assuming that you > assumed it :-) it might have misled you a bit. I wasn't mislead. Given the differenc in price, it was obvious it wasn't Kester.
From: Michael A. Terrell on 18 Jul 2010 01:47 Jeff Liebermann wrote: > > On Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:14:45 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell" > <mike.terrell(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > > >Jeff Liebermann wrote: > > >> I have some rolls of solder around the shop that are not well labeled > >> or identified. Rather than risk leaving corrosive flux on a board, I > >> prefer to clean most everything. > > > I just tossed solder like that into my solder pot. > > Right. Great idea. I did that once and regretted it. I tossed most > of a 1 lb roll of Ersin 362 (62/38) rosin core solder into the wire > lead tinning solder pot. The roll had gotten splattered with acid and > was leaking flux. The result was a large cloud of noxious smog, as > all the rosin simultaneously went up in smoke. You've seen the smoke > produced during soldering. Now multiply that by a few thousand times. > If it had set off the smoke alarm, I would have really been in > trouble. I don't know the correct way to recycle and remelt old > solder. Whatever it is, should probably be done outdoors. I would NEVER add a pound of solder to an existing solder pot at one time. When I bought my 6" diameter solder pot I had enough used solder to more than fill it. It came from the use of a smaller solder pot to salvage ICs from scrap PC boards. Float the board, then tap the corner of the solder pot. A bunch of solder balls hit the aluminum plate the pot was on. I would use a large pair of channel lock pliers to pick up the hot pot to pour out some solder into a small aluminum pan, then dump all the loose solder into the pot. Solder pots are required to have an exhaust fan, in industrial settings in my area. -- Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.
From: Smitty Two on 18 Jul 2010 03:27
In article <i1t5jq$k2f$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer(a)comcast.net> wrote: > "Smitty Two" <prestwhich(a)earthlink.net> wrote in message > news:prestwhich-D3E215.12482717072010(a)news.eternal-september.org... > > In article <i1sv01$oqv$1(a)news.eternal-september.org>, > > "William Sommerwerck" <grizzledgeezer(a)comcast.net> wrote: > > >>>>> To compare apples to apples, I called my supplier yesterday for > >>>>> current pricing: 63/37, $13.80/lb. 60/40, $13.30/lb. I also asked > >>>>> how many people were buying 60/40, and she confirmed that > >>>>> well over 90% of customers use 63/37. > > >>>> Fascinating. It raises the question of why there is such a huge > >>>> difference in the pricing of Kester's solders. > > >>> If you're referring to widely different prices from different suppliers, > >>> it's the same with any product or service, of course. When the 99% > >>> isopropyl topic come up, I plugged it into google's "shopping" tab. > >>> Prices ranged from 2.79 to 14.50 for a pint of the stuff. > > >> That isn't what I meant. There's a 20% difference in the price between > >> Kester's 60/40 and 63/37 solders. > > > Oh, so you didn't read my post after all. To reiterate, 63/37 is 13.80, > > 60/40 is 13.30. That's uh, let's see, oh yeah, less than 4%. > > <GASP!> > > Yes, I DID read your post, and Yes, I did understand exactly what you said. > To wit... that there was almost no difference in the prices of the 60/40 and > 63/37 solders from your supplier. That's why I raised the question about why > there WAS such a large difference between Kester's solders. > > I think it was plain from what I wrote that I was wondering why there was > almost no difference in your supplier's prices for solders from (presumably) > the same manufacturer, while Kester solders had a 20% difference. (See > above.) Must /everything/ be explained in excruciating detail five times > over? > > This happens over and over and over and over and over and over and over and > over, and not just to me. It's because people don't read carefully, then > think about what they've read. Believe me, I sometimes am about to respond > to a post, then discover I'm mis-understood it. AH-SO! At last we're communicating. Yep, usenet is tough that way sometimes. Here's the missing piece: The solder I buy IS KESTER. The EXACT same stuff that you buy. Only two differences: The disparity in formulations is less, and the price is roughly half. |