Whiskers

IBM had this problem back in the 70s with the silver plated tracks on the backplanes of their mainframes. Fujitsu also had it with tin whiskers growing on the connectors of their early sealed disk units in the early 80s. They had to make a special zapper that burnt the whiskers out.

whiskers

25 years ago I had the job of wandering the distribution frames of the (then) Telecom DDN with a stiff bristled brush to get rid of Zinc Wnhiskers that grew between the pair legs.

It's a common problem.

Terry