Engineering Failures

As well as the link provided by David (which will get you there if you follow the suggestions on the pages presented) I know that Naval suppliers have made reports on this phenomena. It seems that the penchant for using Lead free solder is exacerbating the problem in some systems. This can be a problem in system for very high energy management.

Tin wiskers have been a big problem in high-rel and/or safety-critical systems. Some people believe the uncommanded acceleration problem with Toyota Prius' was due to tin whiskers in the throttle pedal.

Several space mission had crashes and serious failures that were attributed to whiskers.

I've seen it on some of the gear I have built, on the leads of chips. Pure tin platings and solder that is exposed to humid condition is most susceptible. Adding silver or other things to the tin seems to reduce the growth of the whiskers.

Jon

Adding lead is even better >:-} ...Jim Thompson

Yeah, I agree. Television is an engineering disaster, especially since it apparently induces you to forget the program that you were watching. However, don't worry. It's only a side effect of the low intellectual quality programming which makes you want to forget the program. Next time you watch such a "technical" program on TV, try to find the mistakes in analysis, interpretation, causality, and conclusions. Each episode usually has at least a few such mistakes, which should be sufficient to get your attention and help you retain some memories of what you were watching.

My guess(tm) is that it was several episodes on the Hysteria Channel of a series called "Modern Marvels". It might be Season 6, episode 18 titled "Engineering Disasters" first aired February 22, 1999, but I'm not certain. I found what might be the series on You Tube, unfortunately with really jumpy video and awful audio at: part 1 part 2 part 3 Looks like it was recorded with a hand held video camera staring at a TV screen. I didn't want to suffer through all 3 parts to see if any of them included tin whiskers. Sorry.

There are a fair number of other You Tube videos on the subject of tin whiskers which should be more memorable:

Talk to your cat about them..

I use it where I'm still allowed to, on gear that will have a very long service life. But, the CHIPS come with lead-free platings, and when you solder them, the pure tin on the leads can still grow whiskers. I had some Xilinx chips that sat around for some time, and was able to see quite large whiskers growing right at the bends of the leads.

Now, I have to take all gear and examine the leads under a microscope to check for whiskers.

Jon