Hi All,

I know this is an old question, and I forgot exactly how to determine how much tin you should add to a wave solder pot when the tin gets low. The existing wave solder machine at my new employer that they have now has a 500-lb pot, and the last analysis that was done had the solder at:  60.25% Sn / 39.61% Pb, everything else was within limits. Obviously the tin content needs to be corrected.

I talked to my old buddy Ed Popielarski about this and he referenced me to a link from Kester that has the calculation at this link at the bottom of the page. According to this formula, I need to add around 37.16 lbs of tin to the pot:

http://www.galco.com/techdoc/kstr/14-6337-0027_td.pdf

Then AIM solder has this calculation at the bottom of the page at this link. This one says I’ll need to add around 14 lbs. of tin:

http://www.advprecision.com/pdf/Solder_Pot_Maintenance.pdf

And Indium offered this formula to my boss (it’s a cut and paste from a email that he forwarded to me), which I’m having a hard time following (but I can be dense sometimes), I don’t see how they came up with the 39.86 lb figure:

I did a quick calculation. If you have a 500 lb. pot and the tin level is at 60.25%, you want to add 39.86 lbs. of tin to bring it back to 63%. 

Here is the equation I always use: let assume you need to add X: 

(500*0.6025 + X)÷(500+X) = 0.63

X=39.86

So I wonder why the discrepancies between the solder mfg formulas? The tin content that they say I should add ranges from around 14 – 40 lbs. Can anybody help refresh this old geezers mind?

Steve




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