[Elecraft] OT: News Article on "Tin Whiskers" Ruining Electronics

[Mike S]

At 12:28 AM 10/19/2007, Don Wilhelm wrote...
>The 'tin-whiskers' problem is one that exists mainly at the chip 
>level.
>The migration of conductive paths between pins that can be soldered by 
>hand techniques is *not* a problem because the 'whiskers' typically do 
>not extend that far.  It is a problem inside the chips where distances 
>are measured in angstroms rather than in fractional inches or 
>millimeters.

Not according to NASA studies. They state "Whiskers as long as a few 
millimeters are not uncommon..." - 
http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/background/index.htm

Common through hole IC packages (DIP) have 2.54mm center to center, 
which means ~1 mm air gap between pins, and that is also a _very_ 
common hole spacing pattern for discrete components. Here's an example 
of non-"chip level" failure caused by tin whiskers: 
http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/photos/pom/2004april.htm