Tining home made pcb boards

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large_ghostman

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Ok four maybe years ago this post might of been worth it, but i doubt few make there own pcb boards these days, and i doubt even fewer decide to Tin them. So the following is interesting to exactly 1 member (me), who dosnt actually need the video as I know a slightly different way to do it.

But seeing as the chemicals are easy to get, and seeing as it might help someone one day after world war 3, i thought i would post it anyway.

A couple of points, dont bother using the polish mentioned, you can buy the raw chemicals stated in the video on ebay. Also no need to actually make that amount and dip, just sponge on the board.

 
I once did a board using peanut oil and a frying pan to heat the board. Then grab it, add tin/lead solder and wipe with rag and re-immerse and do it again until it looks good. Basically re-flow solder, not tin.

It's hard to get the boards clean of the oil though.
 
I dont think i have ever bothered to Tin a complete board, and i still make my own as i got a stock of blank pcb's. But I thought it might interest someone... I cant be the only sado out there.. can I??
 
Hi,

Back in the day there was a product called, "Tin It", and that was used to tin a whole board. Dont know if it is still around or not i think that was in the 1980's.
 
That was basically Tin Chloride based like mentioned in the video, also used Urea instead of Thiourea, but no idea how they got it to work..Might have used a now banned chemical on top of it. The process in the Video, is actually based upon patents from the older product in the 80's, what they did was swap out the chemicals for OTC sources of them instead.

But most people in most countries can get the base chemicals from Amazon or Ebay. The question becomes, WHY?? EVEN me, I now buy boards in from China, they are way cheaper to order than make! I am looking into gold plating home made boards however.

I have a board that in an idea world I would gold plate from gold scrap.
 

Why go through the effort of using gold scrap, just raid your mothers jewelry box.
 
I thought some more about this, solder is ok except most of us use lead solder, lead mixed with the tin dosnt do the same job as Tin on its own. This is kind of mentioned in the video where the solder has to contain no lead, and no flux and be 90-95% Tin.

This is one reason I would honestly just buy Tin Chloride, its cheap and you can get it from garden centers if you have too. I might Tin the board before I gold plate it, I dont know yet as I am working on a different Gold plate method. The plan was to use non Cyanide based Gold compounds to plate with, but that is proving difficult. A massive problem in the UK is the speed at which chemicals disapere from sale. Using a Chemical supply house is ok, but the cost shoots up.
 

That was a 60/40 [EDIT: was 60/50] solder deal which probably works better than 63/37.

I know, most of the gold plate is cyanide based. Did some electro less gold stuff occasionally at work.

Hewlett-Packards PCB process in the 70's was copper-Nickel-Gold. You need to put layer of Nickel over the copper before you put the gold down. It's a nice surface to solder to.

I tried some of the Tin plate solutions that were sold for PCB work. I never liked it. The HASL (Hot Air Solder Level) seems like a reasonable finish.

The rag thing was much like tinning copper plumbing tubing when re-making old joints. It takes multiple passes. There's always, I guess, the solder pot

Peanut oil is what I could think of, IR would surely be better.
 
Last edited:
"That was a 60/50 solder deal which probably works better than 63/37.

70/60 solder would work even better.
 
I have never had a headache in my life.

I only eat good food like McDonalds, KFC, meat pies and chips with sauce.
 
Little Ghostman,
Thanks for posting this. I still make my own PC boards, and there are other uses for tinning solution besides PC boards, so this isn't obsolete technology.

I have an ancient bottle of commercial tinning solution (maybe 20 years old), and I can definitely smell the thiourea in it. It doesn't deposit tin as well as it used to, so maybe the Sn-II has turned into Sn-IV after all these years.

Do you think that sodium thiosulphate (photographer's hypo) would work instead of thiourea?
 
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