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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ralfph who wrote (32537)	2/10/2007 8:02:34 PM
From: The Vet	Respond to of 78422

For some reason, the move away from lead free solder towards alloys containing silver is still being largely ignored in calculating future silver use. IMO the use of silver in soldering electronic circuit boards to replace lead will soon be a major source of demand for silver which will be greater than the net use of silver in photography. Recycling of silver used in photography was high. Recycling of silver solders is going to be much less and much slower. npl.co.uk "The adoption of lead-free soldering will have major implications for the industry. Fortunately, some progress has been achieved in key areas. Although it is widely agreed that there is no drop-in replacement for SnPb solder, there is a range of possible alternatives commercially available. The trick is to choose the right one for any particular application, and here again there are interesting differences of approach. In general, decisions in Europe and America have been reached on the basis of extrapolation from known materials properties and process issues. In Japan, materials have been ranked in order of suitability based on actual product builds. However, over the past year or so there has been an increasing consensus for using one family of alloys, based on SnAgCu. This family has the advantages of good reliability and good solderability, but suffers from a slightly higher melting temperature (217°C) and increased cost due to the silver content. Since there are two patented compositions in this family (one American and one Japanese), account must be taken of possible patent and licence coverage. Consequently, Japanese assemblers tend to select alloy compositions that fall outside the American patent i.e. slightly away from the eutectic composition, whereas European and American companies have focused on the eutectic alloy. "